
Glass „i^HdiL 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 



THE 



CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 



JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A., LL.D. 

HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD 

AUTHOR OF "history OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE" " SHORT HISTORY OF THE 

ENGLISH people" " THE MAKING OF ENGLAND*' ETC. 



ttJitI) |)omoit nnb iltaijs 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1884 






■^j transfer 



PREFACE. 



A FEW words of introduction are needed to the 
following unfinished story of the " Conquest of Eng- 
land," in which I may explain how far these pages, 
in their present form, represent the final work and 
intention of their writer. I cannot do this save by 
giving some short account of how the book was 
written, and the tale of the two volumes, the " Mak- 
ing of England " and the " Conquest of England," 
forms, in fact, but one story, 

After Mr. Green had. closed his fourth volume of 
his " History of the English People," an apparent 
pause in the illness against which he had long been 
struggling made it seem possible that some years 
of life might yet lie before him. For the first time 
he could look forward to labor less fettered and 
hindered than of old by stress of weakness, in 
which he might gather up the fruit of past years 
of preparation ; and with the vehement ardor of a 
new hope he threw himself into schemes of work 
till then denied him. But he had scarcely begun 
to shape his plans when they were suddenly cut 
down. In the early spring of 1881 he was seized 
by a violent attack of illness, and it needed but a 



vi PREFACE. 

little time to show that there could never be any 
return to hope. The days that might still be left 
to him must henceforth be conquered day by day 
from death. In the extremity of ruin and defeat 
he found a higher fidelity and a perfect strength. 
The way of success was closed, the way of coura- 
geous effort still lay open. Touched with the spirit 
of that impassioned patriotism which animated all 
his powers, he believed that before he died some 
faithful work might yet be accomplished for those 
who should come after him. At the moment of 
his greatest bodily weakness, when fear had deep- 
ened into the conviction that he had scarcely a few 
weeks to live, his decision was made. The old 
plans for work were taken out, and from these a 
new scheme was rapidly drawn up in such a form 
that if strength lasted it might be wrought into a 
continuous narrative, while if life failed some fin- 
ished part of it might be embodied in the earlier 
" History." Thus, under the shadow of death, the 
" Making of England " was begun. During the five 
summer months in which it was written that shadow 
never lifted. It was the opinion of his doctors that 
life was only prolonged from day to day throughout 
that time by the astonishing force of his own will, 
by the constancy of a resolve that had wholly set 
aside all personal aims. His courage took no touch 
of gloom or disappointment ; every moment of com- 
parative ease was given to his task ; when such mo- 
ments failed, hours of languor and distress were given 



PREFACE. yj- 

with the same unfaltering patience. As he lay 
worn with sickness, in his extreme weakness unable 
to write a line with his own hand, he was forced for 
the first time to learn how to dictate ; he had not 
even strength himself to mark the corrections on 
his printer's proofs, and these, too, were dictated 
by him, while the references for the volume were 
draw^n up as books were carried one by one to his 
bedside, and the notes from them entered by his 
directions. With such sustained zeal, such eager 
conscientiousness was his work done that much 
of it was wholly rewritten five times, other parts 
three times ; till as autumn drew on he was driven 
from England, and it became needful to bring the 
book rapidly to an end which fell short of his orig- 
inal scheme, and to close the last chapters with less 
finish and fulness of labor. 

The spring of 1882 found the same frail and suf- 
fering life still left to him. But sickness had no 
force to quench the ardor of his spirit. Careful 
only to save what time might yet remain for his 
work, he hastened to England in May, and once 
more all sense of weakness seemed to vanish before 
the joy of coming again to his own land. He had 
long eagerly desired to press forward to later pe- 
riods of English history, in which the more varied 
forces at work in the national life, and the larger 
issues that hung on them, might give free play to 
his own personal sympathies. But the conditions 
of his life shut out the possibility of choice ; and he 



Vlll 



PREFACE. 



resolutely turned again to the interrupted history 
of early England, to take up the tale at the period 
of its greatest obsc^irity and difficulty. In the 
scheme which was drawn up at this time the pres- 
ent volume was to have closed with the " Conquest 
of England " by the Danes. This plan was, in fact, 
a return to the division adopted in the " Short His- 
tory of the English People," where the conquest by 
Swein was looked on as the turning-point of the 
story, and a new period in the history of England 
began from the time when the English people first 
bowed to the yoke of foreign masters, and " kings 
from Denmark were succeeded by kings from Nor- 
mandy, and these by kings from Anjou." The 
eight chapters which bring the narrative to the 
Danish Conquest form the work that filled the last 
months of his life — a work still carried on with the 
same patient and enduring force, and done with 
that careful haste which comes of the knowledge 
that each month's toil may be the last. The book 
in this earlier form was finished and printed in the 
autumn, though in the pressing peril of the time the 
final chapters were so brief as to be scarcely more 
than outlines. Once more he was forced to leave 
England for the south. In spite of fast-increasing 
illness, and oppressed by heavy suffering, he there 
reviewed his whole work with earnest care. It 
seemed to him still far from his conception of what 
it might be ; the difficulty of the subject roused in 
him a fresh desire to bring it home with living in- 



PREFACE. ijj 

terest to his readers ; and he believed this might be 
done by some added labor on his part. He re- 
solved to make important changes in the original 
plan and in its order, to rewrite some portions, and 
to extend the history beyond the Conquest of Eng- 
land by the Danes to its Conquest by the Normans. 
The printed book was at once cancelled. With a 
last effort of supreme ardor and devotion, he set 
himself to a task which he was never to finish. A 
new opening chapter was formed by drawing to- 
gether the materials he possessed for a sketch of 
the English people at the opening of their long 
struggle with the invaders. But as the chapter 
drew towards its end his strength failed. The 
pages which now close it were the last words ever 
written by his hand — words written one morning in 
haste, for weakness had already drawn on so fast 
that when in weariness he at last laid down his pen 
he never again found strength even to read over the 
words he had set down. 

But even then his work was not over. In this 
last extremity of weakness his mind still turned 
constantly to the story of his people. He would 
still hope, night by night, that on the coming day 
there might be some brief moment in which he 
could even yet dictate the thoughts that were shap- 
ing themselves in his mind — some larger account 
of the history of the English shires which was now 
taking form after long thinking, or some completer 
view of the rule of the Danish kings, or some in- 



^ PREFACE. 

sight of a more sure judgment and knowledge into 
the relations of the Norman Conquest. Many years 
before, listening to some light talk about the epi- 
taphs which men might win, he had said, half uncon- 
sciously, " I know what men will say of me : ' He died 
learning^ " and he made the passing word into a 
noble truth. " So long as he lived he strove to live 
w^orthily." By patient and laborious work, by rever- 
ence and singleness of purpose, by a long self-mas- 
tery, he had " earned diligently " his due reward in 
experience, knowledge, matured wisdom, a wider out- 
look, and a deeper insight. It was impossible for 
him not to know that his powers were only now 
coming to their full strength, and that his real work 
lay yet before him. " I have work to do that I know 
is good," he said when he heard he had only a few- 
clays to live. " I will try to win but one week more 
to write some part of it down." Another conquest 
than this, however, lay before him. It was as death 
drew nearer still that for the first time he said, " Now 
I am weary ; I can work no more." Thus he laid 
down with uncomplaining patience the task he had 
taken up with unflinching courage. " God so granted 
it him." In those last days, as in his latest thoughts, 
the great love he bore his country was still, as it had 
ever been, the true inspiration of his life. The sin- 
oie aim that s^uided all his work till the end came 
was the desire to quicken in others that eager sense 
which he himself had of how rich the inheritance of 
our fathers is with the promise of the future, and to 



PREFACE. -jjj 

bring home to every Englishman some part of the 
beauty that kindled his own enthusiasm in the story, 
whether old or new, of the English People. 

A very few words will explain the work which was 
left to me by my husband to do in preparing this 
volume for publication. In the earlier part of the 
book I have carried out the alterations in the order 
of subjects which had been decided on by him, and 
the first six chapters -may be looked on as represent- 
ing his final plan, save that some alterations would 
have been made in the first chapter, and some pas- 
sages, such as the account of the shires, were not re- 
written as he had intended. Chapters VII. and VIII. 
were left in a wholly unfinished state, having been 
laid aside for consideration and revision. The ma- 
terials for them had not even been drawn into any 
consecutive order, and I am responsible for the di- 
vision and naming of these chapters, and in great 
part for the arrangement of the subjects. 

The closing chapters (IX., X., XI.), which have 
been included in the book according to Mr. Green's 
later plan, stand on a different footing from the rest. 
They were written many years ago, I believe in 
1875, and were then laid aside and never revised 
in any way. The materials for them existed partly 
in a printed form and partly in manuscript notes 
and papers, all alike written some years ago, and 
consisting merely of very rough and imperfect frag- 
ments hastily jotted down and then thrown aside. 



xii PREFACE. 



My work has been to draw these various parts to- 
gether into a connected whole; and in order to 
carry on the unfinished tale to the Norman Con- 
quest, I have inserted some pages (pp. 547-556) 
from the earlier " History of the English People." 
These chapters then, wholly unrevised, and dealing 
with the history of the eleventh century in a partial 
way only, and under some of its aspects, must be 
looked on as incomplete outlines. It had been Mr. 
Green's hope to enrich them by a careful study of 
the social history of England during this period, and 
an indication of the kind of work that might have 
been done in this direction will be found in the pas- 
sage (pp. 419-447) which describes London and the 
trading towns. This was part of his latest work 
last autumn, and has been inserted into the story 
of the reign of Cnut at his desire. 

I have judged it best to print these closing chap- 
ters without any addition of reference or notes, save 
the few which I have been able to draw up from his 
own papers. Those who have read the " Making of 
England " will understand that Mr. Green was ac- 
customed to base his views on wide and full read- 
ing, and I have been unwilling to risk any system 
of notes which must inevitably have seemed to rest 
his conclusions on a foundation narrower than that 
of his own thought and reading. I have felt the 
less difficulty in adopting this course owing to the 
elaborate system of references for this period which 
Mr. Freeman has supplied to students. 



PREFACE. xiii 

I have been specially careful throughout the book 
to preserve the exact words of the writer, even in 
dealing with the unfinished manuscript notes. The 
exceptions to this rule are the two paragraphs that 
open Chapter II., which I myself added at his own 
request, and the greater part of the paragraph on 
the custom of the feud at page 267, which was left 
unfinished, and which I briefly concluded. The 
materials for the reign of Cnut were very imperfect, 
and occasionally, as in pages 447-450, and again at 
the close of the chapter, I have been forced to make 
some expansions and alterations so as to form a con- 
secutive and intelligible narrative. The character 
of Godwine, on pages 519-522, I have drawn up 
from some rough pencilled jottings on the margin 
of a paper, using the exact words I found, but shap- 
ing them into continuous sentences and a general 
order. The few notes which I have added throueh- 
out the book are all marked as my own. 

Two of the maps included in this volume, " Eng- 
land at the Peace of Wedmore," and " England Un- 
der the Ealdormen," are taken from rough unrevised 
plans made by Mr. Green ; for the rest of the maps 
I am myself responsible. 

I. cannot close without a very earnest expression 
of sincere gratitude to the friends who, out of their 
generous affection for his memory, have helped 
me in my task with constant and ready sympathy ; 
I have especially to thank Professor Stubbs for 
the kindness with which he has read through 



xiv PREFACE. 

my work, and given me the advantage of his coun- 
sel. 

' Alice Stopford Green. 

14 Kensington Square, Novejnber, 1883. 

P. S. — I may perhaps add, that, with a view to future editions, it 
had been Mr. Green's intention to ask in the preface to this volume 
for suggestions from those who may have any local knowledge which 
might help to throw light on any points either in this book or in 
the " Making of England." I should be glad, so far as lay in my 
power, to carry out his wishes in this matter. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE ENGLAND OF ECGBERHT. 

PAGE 

Political and Social Changes which Followed the Settlement of the Eng- 
lish in Britain . . . i, 2 

The Gradual Union of the Conquering and the Conquered Races . -2,3 
The Purely English Form given to the New Society .... 3 

The Gradual Advance of Cultivation 4,5 

Illustrated in the Condition of Dorset 5-7 

The Changes Brought about by the Introduction of Christianity . • 8, 9 
Its Long Strife with the Older Religions . ....... 9-1 1 

Its Bringing in of a New Social Class . . .... . .12 

And of a Parochial Organization 13 

Results of this New Ecclesiastical System on the Old Organization of 

English Life 14. IS 

Influence of Christianity in the Growth of Pilgrimages . . . 15,16 

The Pilgrims' Route 17 

The Popularity of Pilgrimages 18 

Influence of Christianity on Law ........ 19 

Character of the First Written Codes of Law ..... 20, 21 

Influence of Christianity on Early English Jurisprudence . . .21 
Early Development of the Conception of Public Justice . . . 22, 23 

Origin of the Judicial Character of Folk-moot and Hundred- moot . 23, 24 

The Extent of the Jurisdiction of the " Folk " 23-25 

The Limitations Introduced in the Right of Private Vengeance . 25-27 

The DifBculties in Enforcing the " Folks' Justice " . . . . 28, 29 

Causes which Led to the Development of the "Justice of the King" 29, 30 

The King and his Court . . . -30 

The King's Progresses . . 3i)32 

Their Influence on Public Justice ........ 32 

The Results of the Consolidation of Britain into the Three Kingdoms — 

In the Growing Importance of the King ..... 33 

In the Decline of the yEtheling 34 

In the Elevation of the Thegn 34 

In the Loss of Power of the Folk-moot ..... 35 
In the Change of Character of the Witenagemot . . 35-37 

Causes which Led to the Overthrow of the Balance of Power among 

the Three Kingdoms 38 

B 



xvi CONTENTS. 

AD. PAGE 

758-793. Internal Condition of Northumbria 39,40 

Its Religious and Intellectual Life . 40, 41 

793-806. Invasion of the Nortlimen and its Results 42 

The Apparent Strength of Mercia ....,.., 43 

Its Real Weakness 43 

The Superiority of Wessex Derived from the Character of the Country 44, 45 
From the Varied Composition of the Kingdom ..... 45 

From its Administrative Order 45, 46 

The Character of Ecgberht's Supremacy 46,47 



CHAPTER II. 

THE COMING OF THE WIRINGS. 829-858. 

787. The First Coming of the Pirates . . . . . . . 48,49 

793, 794. Their Raids on Northumbria 49 

The Significance of their Attack 49,50 

Growth of the Scandinavian Peoples 51 

Conditions of their Life 51-53 

Character of their Country 53, 54 

Their Early Customs and Religion 55, 56 

The Wikings . . .56 

Their Mode of Warfare 56,57 

The Causes of their Wanderings ....... 57,58 

The Two Lines of their Attack on Europe 59 

Settlement of the Northmen in South Jutland 60 

800. Their Attack on the Franks 60 

810. The Death of Godfrid and Civil War in South Jutland .... 61 

834. Descent of the Northmen on the Isle of Sheppey 62 

c 820. Their Descent on Ireland 63 

832. Thorgil's Settlement in Ireland 64 

Its Effect in Arousing the West Welsh to Arms ..... 64 
Effect of the Pirate Attacks in Arresting the Consolidation of England . 65 
The Political Relations of Wessex and Kent ...... 66 

The Military Resources of Wessex . , 66, 67 

Relation of the Church to the Frankish Kings . - ... 67 

Peculiar Position of the English Bishops 68 

National Character of the Church . . ... . . .69 

Effect upon the Church of the Pirate Invasion 69 

838. Its Alliance with the West-Saxon Kings . ...... 70 

839. Death of Ecgberht and Accession of ^thelwulf ..... 70 

SSTI ei ser/- Extension of the Wiking Settlement in Ireland 71 

837-845. The Wikings Attack Wessex 72 

845. Death of Thorgils 72 

845-848. The Pirates Leave Wessex to Attack Frankland 73 

Importance of Kent 74 

838. Pirate-raids on East Anglia and Kent 75 

851. ^thelwulf's Victory at Aclea . 76 



CONTENTS. 



XVll 



A,D. PAGE 



855. Pirate Settlement in the Isle of Slieppey 
iEthelwulf's Foreign Policy . 

S53. ^thelwulf's Conquest of the North Welsh 

854. /Ethehvulf's Pilgrimage to Rome . 

The Franks under Charles the Bald 

856. /Ethehvulf's Visit to Charles the Bald, and his Marriage with Judith 
856. Wessex Rises against ^thehvulf 

^thelvvulf Retires to Kent and is Succeeded in Wessex by ^thelbald 



857. 



76 
76 
77 
77 
78 
78 
8o 
So 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MAKING OF THE DANELAW. 858-87S. 

858. Death of iEthehvulf 81 

860. .'Ethelbald Dies and is Sucteeded by ^thelberht 81 

866. Death of ^thelberht and Accession of yEthelred 81,82 

Extent of the Scandinavian Conquests . 82 

The Importance of Britain to the Pirates ...... 82 

First Appearance of the Danes ........ 83 

Their Mode of Warfare 84 

866. Attack of the Danes on East Anglia under Ivar the Boneless . . 86 

867. Their Attack on Northumbria and Conquest of York .... 87 

Ruin of the Religious Houses 88 

Position of the Primate of York 89 

868. ^thelred drives the Danes back from Mercia 90, 91 

869. The Danish Conquest of East Anglia under Ivar and Hubba . . 91, 92 

870. Martyrdom cfEadmund of East Anglia ,92 

Mercia pays Tribute to the Danes 92 

The Danger of Wessex , . . . 92, 93 

871. The Danish Attack on Wessex 93 

849. The Birth of Alfred 94 

His Childhood. . .95 

His Position as Secundarius 96 

Political Significance of his Marriage 96 

871. Danish Victory at Reading and Encampment on Ashdown ... 97 

Importance of this Position ......... 98 

.^thelred's Victory at Ashdown 98, 99 

871. Alfred becomes King ....,..,., 100 

871. Alfred buys Peace from the Danes .,..,,, 100 

874. The Danish Conquest of Mercia ........ loi 

875. Halfdene Conquers Bernicia and Ravages Cumbria and Strathclyde lor, 102 

876. The Pirates Gather their Forces for a Final Attack on Wessex . . 102 

876. Guthrum's Attack on the Southern Coast ...... 103 

877. .^Elfred Recovers Exeter from the Danes 104 

878. The Danes Overrun Wessex ...,...,. 104 

iElfred Falls back behind Selwood 105 

His Refuge in Athelney .......... 105 

878. /Elfred's Victory at Edington 106 



XVlll 



CONTENTS. 



A.D. 

878. 



S68-816. 



877. 



880. 



The Peace of Wedmore 

Its Political Consequences . . ... 
Its Effect on the European Struggle with the Pirates 
The Importance of the Danish Settlement in Britain 
The Danish Settlement in Northumbria. 

Traces in Yorkshire of this Settlement . 

The Northern Trade. . . . 

Traces of their Settlement in York . 

Their Political Organization and the Trithings 
The Danish Settleme-nt in Mid-Britain . 

The Political Organization in Mid-Britain 

The Distribution of Settlers 
The Danish Settlement in East Anglia . 

The Character of Guthrum's Kingdom . 

Its English Institutions, and Adoption of Chr 

Danes 

Relations of the Danelaw with the Scandinavian Realms 

Relation of the Danelaw to Wessex 

Real Significance of the Danish Settlement . 



istianity by 



107 
107, 108 
108 
109 
no 
III 

"3 
114 

"5 
"5 

[16, 117 
117 
118 
118 

the 
119, 120 

120 
121, 122 

1 2-, 



CHAPTER IV. 
iELFRED. 878-901. 

Results of the Want of Political Organization in the Danelaw . . 124 

Danger of iElfred's Position 125,126 

878-884. Years of Peace 126 

Material and Moral Disorganization in Wessex ..... 126 
Military Disorganization and Weakness of the Fyrd .... 127 
Extinction of the Free Ceorls and Growth of the Thegns Brought 

about by the War . . . 129 

Alfred's Employment of the Thegns for Military Service . . 129, 130 
.^Elfred's Reconstruction of the Military System .... 130,131 

897. His Creation of a Navy 131,132 

The Reorganization of Public Justice ...... 132,133 

The New Relation of the King to Justice ..... 134, 135 

Importance of English Mercia 136 

Effect of the Danish Wars on the Kingly Houses of Britain . . , 137 
iElfred Becomes King of the Mercians . . . . . . 137,138 

Alfred's Work in Introducing a Common Law among the English 

Peoples 139 

878=884. The Descents of the Danes on Frankland 141 

884. Renewal of the Danish Attack on England ...... 142 

884. The Rising of East Anglia 142 

London Under the Danes of East Anglia 143 

886. Alfred Recovers London from Guthrum 144 

886. Frith between Alfred and Guthrum 144 

The Division of Essex ......... 144, 145 



CONTENTS. 



XIX 



Importance of the Recovery of the Thames Valley and of London 

Ui^gvowth of a New National Sentiment 

The Intellectual Ruin Brought about by the Danish Wars 

Importance of Wessex for the Preservation of English Civilization 

iElfred's Restoration of Learning .... 

He Draws Men of Learning to his Court 

Alfred's Work in the Formation of English Literature 

English the First Prose Literature of the Modern World 

Alfred's Translations .... 

The Bishop's Roll of Winchester ... 

.(Alfred's Work on the Chronicle . 

The Historical Importance of the Chronicle 

Death of Guthrum 

Growth of the Scandinavian Kingdoms . , 

Harold Fairhair 

Impulse Given to the Pirate Raids. 

Renewal of the Danish Attack on Southern Britai 

Hasting Ravages Wessex 

The Rising of the Danelaw 

Alliance of the Danes and the Welsh 

Hasting's Occupation of Chester . 

Defeat of the Danes and Ending of the War 

Alfred's Life 

His Love of Strangers .... 
Foundation of Athelney . . ... 
Othere and Wulfstan .... 
The Organization of ^Elfred's Court . 
The Royal Revenue .... 
iElfred's Connection with the Continent. 
His Relations with the Welsh 
His Relations with Bernicia and the Scots 
Growth of the Scot Kingdom . 

Death of Alfred 

Character of Alfred .... 



62, 



PAGE 
146 

47 

48 

49 
50 
52 
54 
55 
56 
5S 
59 
60 
61 
62 
62 
63 
63 
63 
64 

65 
66 
66 
68 
69 
69 
72 

73 
74 
75 
76 
76 
77 



78- 1 So 



CHAPTER V. 
THE HOUSE OF ALFRED. 901-937. 

Eadward the Elder 181,182 

Peace with the Danes 183 

Eadward Takes the Title of "King of the Anglo-Saxons . . . 184 
The Weakness of English Mercia . . . . . . . .185 

Eadward Fortifies Chester . . . . . . . * . 185, 1 86 

Outbreak of War with the Danes 187 

Eadward's Kingdom Threatened from the North and from the South . 187 

Eadward's Annexation of the Thames Valley 188,189 

Opening of War with East Anglia 189 



XX CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

Eadvvard's Conquest of Southern Essex. 189 

yEthelflsed Seizes the Line of the Watling Street 190 

The Watling Street 190, 191 

913. ^thelflsed's Advance on the Upper Trent 192 

^-Ethelflaed Secures the Line of the Avon 193 

918,919. Eadward's Advance on the Ouse 194,195 

921. He Conquers Northampton .196 

921, 922. He Completes the Conquest of East Anglia, Essex, and the Fens . 196, 197 
917,918. ^thelflsed Attacks the Five Boroughs ...... 197,198 

922. Death of yEthelflaed 198 

922. Eadward Completes the Conquest of Mid-Britain 199 

Mercia Made Part of the West-Saxon Kingdom . . . . . 200 

Political Results of the Conquest of the Danelaw 200,201 

The Growth of Commendation 201,202 

Growth of the New Territorial Character of the. Kingship . . . 202 

Importance of the Oath of Allegiance 203 

Danger of Eadvvard's Position . . 204 

His Fortification of the Northwest Frontier . . ' . . . 205, 206 

Relation of Wessex to Bernicia and the Kingdom of the Scots . . 206 

924. The Northern League against Eadward . 207 

924. Submission of the North to Eadward 208 

925. ^thelstan Becomes King 209 

His Policy . .210 

925. Submission of the Northern League to yEthelstan . . . . .211 
Submission of the Welsh 211,212 

926. ^thelstan Becomes King of Northumbria 212 

Fusion of Danes and Englishmen 213 

Character of iEthelstan's Witenagemots. ..... 213-215 

The Work of the Witenagemots for Public Order. . . . 216, 217 

The Regulation of Trade and of Coinage 218 

The Origin of Frith-gilds ........ 219,220 

Use of the Word " Shire" 221,222 

West-Saxon Origin of the Shire 222,223 

The Early Extension of the Shire System in Wessex .... 224 

The Extension of the Shire over Mercia 225,226 

The Extension of the Shire over the Danelaw .... 227,228 

The Position of the Shire-reeve 229 

Importance of his Financial Work 229,230 

Growth of his Authority 230 

The Imperial Claims of .(Ethelstan. . . . . . 231,232 

The Real Weakness of his Empire 232 

Danger from the Northmen of Ireland 232, 233 

Danger from the Northmen of Gaul 233 

912. Hrolf's Settlement in Gaul . 234 

The Results of this Settlement on France and on England . . 234,235 

Relations of the Danelaw and Normandy 235,236 

The Growth of the Norman Duchy 236,237 

The Effect on the Foreign Policy of the English Kings . . . 238, 239 



CONTENTS. xxi 

A.D. PAGE 

926-930. ^thelstan's Alliances with Foreign Powers 239, 240 

929. The Dangers which Threatened William Longsword . . . 240, 241 

933. His Successful Alliance with the House of Paris . . . . . 241 

934. Results of his Policy Seen in the Renewal of the Northern League 

against ^thelstan 242 

The Significance of the League 243 

937. The Battle of Brunanburh 243,244 

CHAPTER VI. 

WESSEX AND THE DANELAW. 937-955. 

Political Consequences of the Battle of Brunanburh .... 245 
Restoration of the Northumbrian Under-kingship ..... 246 

The Weakness of the Monarchy 246, 247 

Political Reorganization of Britain . 247 

Position of the Ealdormen 248, 249 

The Ealdormanries of East Anglia and Essex .... 249,250 

Eric Bloody- axe 251,252 

^thelstan Sets Eric as King in Northumbria 252 

936. ^thelstan Continues his Former Policy with Regard to Normandy . 253 

936. Lewis from over-sea King of the West Franks ..... 254 

The Support given to him by ^thelstan 254, 255 

The Difficulties of Lewis and Failure of ^thelstan's Political 

Schemes ........... 255, 256 

940. Death of ^thelstan and Accession of Eadmund .... 257, 258 
Eadmund's Policy 257, 258 

941. The Revolt of the Danelaw 259 

The Position of Wulfstan of York 260 

943. The Revival of the English Danelaw 261 

Growth of the Norman Power. 261 

944. Invasion of Normandy by Lewis . . . . . . . . 262 

944. Reduction of the Danelaw by Eadmund, . . .... . 262 

Political Relations of Eadmund with the North .... 262, 263 

Cumbria Under the Northumbrian and West- Saxon Kings . . 264, 265 
Norwegian Settlements in Cumbria 265 

945. The Grant of Cumbria to the Scottish Kings . ..... 266 

Eadmund's Reform of the Custom of the Feud 267 

945. Normandy Freed from the West Franks ...... 268 

946. Death of Eadmund 269 

The Childhood and Youth of Dunstan 270-272 

He Becomes a Monk 272 

He is Made Abbot of Glastonbury . .... . . . 274 

Eadred Becomes King "■ , . 274 

Dunstan Becomes Counsellor to Eadred . . . . . . 275 

Significance of Eadred's Coronation . ... . . 275,276 

Submission of the North to Eadred . . . . . . . 277 

The Rising of Northumbria Under Eric Hiring 278 



XXI 1 



CONTENTS. 



A.D. 

948. 

949-95 

954. 

954. 



955. 



Eadred Ravages Novthumbria and Eric is Driven Out 
2. Olaf, Sihtric's Son, Rules in Northumbria 
Final Submission of the Danelaw . 
Northumbria Made into an Earldom 
Dunstan's School at Glastonbury . 
^thelwold's School at Abingdon . 
Their Influence on English Literature . 

Eadred Claims Imperial Supremacy over the Whole of Britain 
Eadred's Death 



PAGE 

• 279 

• 279 
2S0, 281 
. 281 

282, 283 

• 283 
284, 285 
286, 287 
. 288 



955. 

956. 
956. 
956. 

95T. 
957,95! 

958. 
959. 

959. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GREAT EALDORMEN. 955-978. 

Changes in the Political State of England 
Growth of the Royal Power ... 

Its Weakness . 

Position of the Ealdormen .... 

Limitations to their Power . ..... 

Accession of Eadwig ..... 

Strife of the Three Political Parties in the Realm 

Coronation of Eadwig 

Exile of Dunstan . . ... 
^If here Made Ealdorman of Mercia 

The Significance of this Step . 

Eadwig's Marriage to ^Ifgifu. 

The Revolt against Eadwig and Division of the Kingdom 

Eadgar Made King of the Mercians, and Return of Dunstan , 

Death of Eadwig and Accession of Eadgar . 

Creation of Two West-Saxon Ealdormanries. 

Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury 

The Union of the King and the Primate in the Government 

Realm 

Character of Eadgar 

The Peace and Order of his Government 
Relations of England with the Surrounding States. 

Eadgar's Relations to the Danelaw 

His Policy towards the Danish Settlers . . . 
The Industrial Condition of England .... 
Customary Rents and Payment of Labor . . 
Instances of Hurstbourn and Dyddenham 
The Rural Society as Shown in the Manor of Cranborne 

The Class of Slaves 

The Protection Given them by the Church . . . 

The Inland Trade of the Country 

The "Chapman" . . ... 

The Gleeman . . . 

The Revival of Literature under Dunstan 



289, 290 

290, 291 
291 
292 

• 293 

• 293 

294, 295 

295. 296 
296 

• 297 

• 297 



299-301 

• 301 
302 

302, 303 

• 304 

the 

304. 305 
306, 307 
308, 309 

309.310 
310,311 
312-314 
315.316 
316,317 
317.318 
318,319 

• 319 
320,321 
321,322 
323.324 

• 324 

• 325 



964. 



973. 
975. 

975. 

978. 
978. 

988. 



CONTENTS. xxiii 

PAGE 

His Revival of Historical Learning 326 

Historical School of Worcester 326, 327 

The Decline of Monasticism during the Danish Wars .... 328 

Its Revival in Middle and Southern England 329-331 

The Influence of the Secular Clergy 333 

The Political Position of the Bishops 332, 333 

Eadgar and the Ealdormen ' . 333, 334 

The Rule of Eadgar 334, 335 

His Coronation 33^ 

His Death 337 

Disputed Succession to the Crown. . . ' . ' , . . 337,338 

Eadward the Martyr ....'. 338 

Growth of the Contest between the Nobles and the Crown . . -339 

Murder of Eadward 34° 

Accession of ^thelred II 34^,342 

Death of Dunstan 343 



992. 



992. 
092. 



c. 1000. 
1002. 



CHAPTER VIII. 
THE DANISH CONQUEST. 988-1016, 

The Breaking-up of the Old Social Organization of the Engl 
The Creation of the Danish Monarchy under Gorm the Old, 
Its Extension under Harald Bluetooth . 

Decline of his Power 

His Death and the Accession of Swein . 
Swein's Burial-feast for Harald .... 
Swein, Driven from Denmark, Becomes a Wiking . 
New Pirate Raids on England .... 

Battle of Maldon 

Character of ^thelred the Unragdig 

/Ethelred's Policy towards the Ealdormen 

The Dangers which Threatened England 

^thelred's Treaties with the Norwegian Host and with 

Breach of the Peace between English and Norwegians 

Olaf Tryggvason 

The Union of Olaf and Swein in an Attack on England 
Their League is Broken up by the English Policy . 
Renewed Attacks of the Pirates .... 
^thelred's Vigorous Measures of Defence 
Swein Recovers his Danish Kingdom . 

Death of Olaf 

.-Ethelred's Alliance with the Normans . 

Character of the Norman Duchy .... 

The Difficulties that Threatened it from Without and Withi 

The Policy of its Dukes 

Condition of Normandy under Richard the Fearless 
The Reign of Richard the Good .... 



Nor 



sh 



mandy 



344-346 
346-348 

348, 349 

349, 350 

• 351 
352- 353 

• 353 

■ 354 

• 354 
355,356 
356,357 
358,359 

• 360 
361, 362 

• 3^3 

■ 364 
364, 365 

. 366 

. 367 



369, 370 

• 370 

• 371 
371,372 
372, 373 
373, 374 

• 375 



Xxiv CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

Importance of the English Alliance with Normandy .... 376 
1002. Strife between ^thelred and his Nobles 37S, 379 

1002. The Massacre of St. Brice's Day 380 

1003. Swein again Attacks Wessex 380 

1004. And East Anglia -381 

100J:-1006. Continued Strife among the Ministers of /Ethelred .... 382 

Changes among the Ealdormen 382 

1006. The High-reeve Eadric 383,384 

1007. Pirate Raids on Wessex 384 

1007-1009. ^thelred's Internal Reforms • • 385 

His Military and Naval Reforms 386 

The Revenue of the Crown . ....... 387,388 

National Taxation . 389 

1009,1010. Fresh Attack of the Danes under Thurkill . ■ .... 390-392 

The Danish Fleet Bought off by Tribute 392 

The Great Invasion under Swein. ....... 393 

His Conquest of England 394 

The Flight of iEthelred and its Results 395 

1014. The Death of Swein 395 

1014. Cnut Chosen King by the Danish Host 396 

1015. His Attack on England . 397 

Political Strife in England, and Treachery of Eadric . . . 397, 398 

1016. Death of ^thelred and Accession of Eadmund Ironside . . . 399 

1016. Cnut's Siege of London 399 

1016. The Battle of Assandun and Division of England . . . 400,401 

1016. Death of Eadmund Ironside 401 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE REIGN OF CNUT. 1016-1035. 

1016. Cnut King of England . 402 

His Measures for the Settlement of the Realm 403 

101'?. His Marriage with Emma 404 

The Character of the Danish Conquest 404,405 

Modified by the Political Condition of England ..... 405 

And of Scandinavia 406 

Results of the Conquest 406, 407 

Character of Cnut's Rule . 407, 408 

His Government According to National Laws and Custom . . 409 

1020. The Rise of Godvvine 410 

The Local Organization of the Realm under Cnut . . . 410,411 
His Development of the Administrative System. . . . 411,412 

His Institution of the Royal Chapel 413 

His Maintenance of the Land-tax 414 

His Military System .......... 414, 415 

His Policy towards the Church 415,416 

His Temper towards England ., . 415,416 



1012. 
1013. 



CONTENTS. 



XXV 



1025. 
1027. 
1028. 



1031. 



1016-1035. 
1027. 
1035. 
1035. 



The Peace of his Reign 
His Conception of Government 
Development of English Trade 
Growth of Oxford. 
Nottingham .... 
Gloucester and Worcester . 
The Seaports. Chester 

Bristol 

The Ports of the Southern Coast. 
The Trade of the Eastern Coast 
The Ports of the East Coast. 
York ..... 

Early London ... 

Conditions of the English Settlement there 

Settlement round St. Paul's . 

First Settlement of the "Cheap" 

The "East-Cheap" 

Growth of London under the West-Saxon Rule, 

Its Early Municipal Life 

Extension of London to the Northward 

Growth of its Trade under Eadgar 

Extension of Eastern London 

Importance of London under Cnut 

Cnut's Foreign Policy . 

His Pilgrimage to Rome 

His Conquest of Norway 

His Policy towards the Scot Kings 

Relations of the Scot Kings with the House of ^^Ifred 

The Political Arrangement between Cnut and Malcolm 

Lothian Becomes Part of the Scottish Realm 

The Danger which Threatened Cnut from Normandy. 

State of Normandy under Robert the Devil 

Birth of William the Conqueror . 

He Becomes Duke of Normandy. 

Death of Cnut ...... 

The Break-up of his Empire 



• 417 
418 

• 419 
419-421 
421,422 
422, 423 
423-426 

426, 427 

427, 428 
429, 430 
430-432 
432-434 

434. 435 

435. 436 

436. 437 
43S, 439 

• 440 

441, 442 

442, 443 

• 443 

444. 445 

445. 446 
■ 447 

• 44S 

• 449 

• 450 

• 450 
451,452 

• 452 
452, 453 

• 454 
455. 456 

• 457 
-• ■ 457 

. 458 
458, 459 



1035. 
1036. 
1040. 



CHAPTER X. 
THE HOUSE OF GODWINE. 1035-1053. 

The Policy of Cnut Carried on by Godwine. ..... 460 

Godvvine's Support of Harthacnut in Wessex 461 

Harald Harefoot Chosen King at Oxford ...... 462 

The Division of England 462, 463 

The Murder of the ^theling Alfred . . . . . . . 464 

Its Results . 464, 465 

Death of Harald Harefoot 466 



XXVI 



CONTENTS. 



A.D. 

1040-1042. 
1042. 
1043. 



1045. 



1046. 
104Y. 



104T. 



1048. 



1049. 



1049. 

1050. 
1050. 

1051. 

1051. 

1051. 

1051. 



Reign of Haithacnut . 

The yEtheling Eadwavd Summoned to England . 

His Coronation 

The Position of Godwine 

The State of Normandy under Duke William 

Character of William 

The Norman Sympathies of Eadward the Confessor 

The State of England at his Accession. 

The Earldom of Northumbria .... 

The Earldom of Mercia 

The Earldom of Wessex ..... 

The Supremacy of Earl Godwine . . . . 

The Jealousies Aroused by it 

The Outlawry of Swein. . . . ■ . 

Opposition to Godwine's Policy towards Scandinavia 

Effect of Normandy on English Politics 

Lanfranc . . . . . ..... 

Revolt against W^illiam in Normandy . 
William's Victory at Val-es-Dunes 

His Mastery of Normandy 

Relations of the French Kings to Normandy and Anjo 
William's Alliance with France against Anjou 
Results of William's Victories on the Course of E 
land and on its Relations with Foreign States 

Flanders 

Its Commercial and Political Importance 

The Empire 

Its Relations with the New Religious Movement. 

Its Alliance with the Papacy. .... 

The Rising of Lower Lorraine, Holland, and Flanders. 

William's Attempt to Form an Alliance with Flanders 

Traditional Policy of Alliance between England and Flande 

Its Maintenance by Godwine. 

His Precautions against William's Policy 

The Council of Rheims. .... 

Its Political Significance .... 

The Norman Alliance with Flanders Broken off 

The Alliance of Flanders Secured for England 

Swein Restored to his English Earldom 

Strife between Eadward and Godwine about the Primacy 

Robert of Jumieges Made Archbishop of Canterbury . 

Widening of the Quarrel between Godwine and the King 

The Outbreak of Open Strife 

Siward and Leofric Support the King .... 
The Flight and Outlawry of Godwine .... 
Godwine and his Sons Take Refuge in Flanders and Ireland 
Results in England of his Flight . 
The Visit of William the Norman 



466, 467 

• 467 
. 468 

469, 470 

470, 471 

• 472 

• 473 
474, 475 
476-478 

• 479 

. 480 
480, 481 
. 482 

• 483 



• 484 
485, 486 
4S6, 487 



Enc 



488 
4S9 
490 

490, 491 

491, 492 
493. 494 
494> 495 

495, 496 

496, 497 

• 497 

497, 498 

498, 499 

• 499 

• 500 
500, 5or 
. 501 

502, 503 

503, 504 

• 505 
505. 506 

• 506 

• 507 

• 508 
508, 509 

• 510 

• 510 

• 5" 
. 512 



CONTENTS. XXvii 

A.D. PAGE 

Gochvine's Position in Flanders 513 

1052. The Return of Godwine 514-516 

The Meeting with the King at London. . . . . . .516 

The Restoration of Godwine and his House. .... 516,517 

The Position Maintained by the King 517 

The Position of Siward and Leofric . 51S 

Godwine and the Primacy .... ..... 519 

Stigand Replaces Robert as Archbisliop . . . . . • S19 

The Character of Godwine ■ . 520-522 

Note on the Growth of the Royal Administration. . . . 523-528 



CHAPTER XL 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 1053-1071. 

The Attitude of William of Normandy. ..... 529,530 

He Carries out his Scheme of Alliance with Flanders. . . 530, 531 
The Difficulties which Followed his Marriage with Matilda. . 531, 532 

His Victory at Mortemer 532, 533 

Death of Godwine 534 

Harold becomes Earl of Wessex 534 

His Character 535 

His Policy towards the Crown 536 

And towards the Rival Earls ... ..... 537 

Siward and the Scot Kings . . . . . . . . 538, 539 

Death of Siward . 539 

Tostig Made Earl of Northumbria ' . . . . . . . 540 

Significance of this Step 540-543 

Alliance between the House of Leofric and Wales .... 543 
Settlement of the Earldoms under Harold ...... 544 

Death of the ^Fltheling Eadward 545 

The Growth of Harold's Ambition 546 

His Election as King Met by the Claims of William .... 547 
The Norwegian Invasion and Battle of Stamford Bridge . . 548, 549 
The Norman Invasion and Battle of Senlac . .... 549-551 

Coronation of William . . 552 

Rising against William .......... 553 

National Revolt of the English ........ 554 

The Close of the Conquest 555)556 

Note on Archbishop Stigand 557-560 

Note on the Character of Harold . 561-563 



PORTRAIT 

Engraved by G. J. STODART_/;-i?w a chalk draiviiig by F. Sandys. 



LIST OF MAPS. 

I. England, 1883 To face page i 

II. Lines of Northern Invasions .... " " 60 

III. England at the Treaty of Wedmore ... << u jQg 

IV. The Campaigns of Eadward and ^thelflasd . " " 188 
V. England under the Ealdormen .... " " ^q2 

VI. Early Oxford 420 

VII. Early Chester 424 

VIII. Early York 433 

IX. Early London To face page 437 



EN&LAND, 1883, 




Longiuidfi "Wear i from Greenwxcii, 2 



MAR 18 1884 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ENGLAND OF ECGBERHT. 

Few periods of our history seem drearier and more Sodai 
unprofitable to one who follows the mere course of sntain. 
political events than the two hundred years which 
close with the submission of the English states to 
Ecgberht.' The petty and ineffectual strife of the 
Three Kingdoms, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, 
presents few features of human interest, while we are 
without the means of explaining the sudden revolu- 
tions which raise and depress their power, or their 
final subsidence into isolation and inaction. It is 
only when we view it from within that we see the 
importance of the time. It was, in fact, an age of 
revolution — an age in which mighty changes were 
passing over every phase of the life of Englishmen ; 
an age in which heathendom was passing into 
Christianity, the tribal king into the national ruler, 
the aetheling into the thegn ; an age in which Eng- 

' See Making of England, chap. viii. — (A. S. G.) 
I 



2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. lish society saw the beginnings of the change which 
The transformed the noble into a lord, and the free ceorl 
E4bMht. into a dependent or a serf ; an age in which new 
moral conceptions told on the fabric of our early 
jurisprudence, and in which custom began to harden 
into written law. Without, the new England again 
became a member of the European commonwealth ; 
while within, the very springs of national life were 
touched by the mingling of new blood with the blood 
of the nation itself. 

''^^'oFit!^'' '^^^ ethnological character of the country had, in 
popiiatioit.iduct, changed since the close of the age of conquest. 
The area of the ground subject to English rule was 
far greater than in the days of Ceawlin or ^thel- 
frith, but in the character of its population the por- 
tion added was very different from the earlier area ; 
for while the Britons had been wholly driven off 
from the eastern half of the island, in the western 
part they remained as subjects of the conquerors. 
It was thus that in Ecgberht's day Britain had come 
to consist of three long belts of country, two of which 
stretched side by side from the utmost north to the 
utmost south, and the population of each of which 
was absolutely diverse. Between the eastern coast 
and a line which we may draw along the Selkirk 
and Yorkshire moorlands to the Cotswolds and Sel- 
wood, lay a people of wholly English blood. West- 
ward again of the Tamar, of the western hills of 
Herefordshire, and of Offa's Dyke, lay a people 
whose blood was wholly Celtic. Between them, 
from the Lune to the coast of Dorset and Devon, 
ran the lands of the Wealhcyn — of folks, that is, in 
whose veins British and English blood were already 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^ 

blending together and presaging in their mingling chap.i. 
a wider blending of these elements in the nation as The 

, , England of 

a whole. Ecgberht. 

The winning of Western Britain opened, in fact, 
a way to that addition of outer elements to the pure . P^ ^ 
English stock which has gone on from that day to race. 
this without a break. Celt and Gael, Welshman and 
Irishman, Frisian and Flamand, French Huguenot 
and German Palatine, have come successively in, 
with a hundred smaller streams of foreign blood. 
The intermingling of races has nowhere been less 
hindered by national antipathy ; and even the hin- 
drances interposed by law, such as Offa's prohibition 
of marriage between English and Welsh, or Edward 
III.'s prohibition of marriage between English and 
Irish, have met with the same disregard. The result 
is, that, so far as blood goes, few nations are of an 
origin more mixed than the present English nation; 
for there is no living Englishman who can say with 
certainty that the blood of any of the races we have 
named does not mingle in his veins. As regards 
the political or social structure of the people, indeed, 
this intermingling of blood has had little or no re- 
sult. They remain purely English and Teutonic. 
The firm English groundwork which had been laid 
by the character of the early conquest has never 
been disturbed. Gathered gradually in, tribe by 
tribe, fugitive by fugitive, these outer elements were 
quietly absorbed into a people whose social and 
political form was already fixed. But though it 
would be hard to distinguish the changes wrought 
by the mixture of race from the changes wrought by 
the lapse of time and the different circumstances 



A THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I, which surround each generation, there can be no 
The doubt that it has brought with it moral results in 

E^fbeJif "modifying the character of the nation. It is not 
without significance that the highest type of the 
race, the one Englishman who has combined in 
their largest measure the mobility and fancy of the 
Celt with the depth and energy of the Teutonic tem- 
per, was born on the old Welsh and English border- 
land, in the forest of Arden. 

Character ^\^Q bv sidc with this chano^e in the character of 

of the ■' I'll 

coimtry. its populatiou had gone on a change ni the character 
of the country itself. Its outer appearance, indeed, 
still remained much the same as in earlier days. 
Not half its soil had as yet been brought under 
tillage ; as the traveller passed along its roads, vast 
reaches of forest, of moor, of fen, formed the main 
landscape before him ; even the open and tilled dis- 
tricts were broken everywhere by w^oods and thickets 
w^hich the farmer needed for his homestead, for his 
fences, for his house-building, and his fire. But lim- 
ited as was its cultivation, Britain was no longer the 
mere sheet of woodland and waste which the English 
had found it. Population had increased,' and four 
hundred years of labor had done their work in widen- 
ing the clearings and thinning the woods. We have 
already caught glimpses of such a work in the moor- 
lands of the North, in the fens of the Wash, in^ the 
thickets of Arden, as the monk carried his axe into 
the forest, or the thegn planted tillers over the grants 
that had been carved for him out of the waste "folk- 
land." The study of such a tract as the Andreds- 

1 Lingard (Ang.-Sax. Church, i. 185) infers this from the new up- 
growth of churches. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^ 

weald would show the same ceaseless struggle with chap. r. 
nature — Sussex-men and Surrey-men mounting over The 
the South-downs and the North-downs to hew their Eclberht. 
way forward to the future meeting of their shire- 
bounds in the heart of the Weald, while the vast 
herds of swine that formed the advance guard of 
the Cantwara, who were cleaving their way westward 
along the Medway, pushed into the " dens" or glades 
in the woodland beyond. 

We can see the general results of this industrial i^orset. 
warfare in a single district, such as Dorset. When 
the English landed in Britain no tract was wilder 
or less civilized; its dense forest- reaches, in fact, 
checked the westward advance of the conquerors, 
and forced them to make their way slowly along the 
coast from the Stour to the Exe. Even when the 
Dorsaetan were fairly settled there, the names of 
their hundreds and of the trysting-places of their 
courts show the wild state of the land, The hun- 
dred-moots gather at barrow or den, at burn or ford, 
in comb or vale, in glade or woodland, here beside 
some huge boulder or stone, there on the line of a 
primeval foss-dyke, or beneath some mighty and 
sacred tree." But even its hundred names show how 
soon the winning of the land began. Dorchester 
tells of the new life growing up on the Roman ruins ; 

' For barrow-trysts, cf. Albretesberga (afterwards Cranbourne), 
Badbury, Modbury, Langeberga, Chalbury, Hunesberga ; for " duns," 
Canendon ( Wimbourne), Faringdon, Glochresdon ; for boulders, 
Stane (Cerne Abbas), Golderonestone, some monolith by Burton 
Bradstock ; for trees, Cuferdstroue, a tree on Culliford Barrow in 
Whitcomb parish ; for foss, Concresdic or Combsditch ; for glade, 
comb, burn, ford, wood, Cocden, Uggescomb, Sherborne, Tollerford, 
Ayleswood. 



6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. Knolton and Gillingham of the new " tons " and 
The "hams" which rose about the settlements of the con- 

Ec|berii?c[uerors; while Beaminster, Yetminster, and Christ- 
church recall the work of the new Christendom that 
settled at last on the soil. Nowhere, indeed, was the 
industrial work of the Church more energetic ; we 
have seen how Ealdhelm planted centres of agri- 
culture as well as of religion at Sherborne and 
Wareham, and if more than a third of the shire be- 
longed in later days to the clergy, it was in the main 
because monk and priest had been foremost in the 
reclamation of the land.' Much, indeed, remained 
to be done. As late as the eve of the Norman con- 
quest, but thirty or forty thousand inhabitants were 
scattered over the soil ; ' the king's forest - rights 
stretched over wild and waste throughout half the 
county, and even in the parts that had been won for 
culture, scrub and brushwood broke the less fruitful 
ground, while relics of the vanished woodland lin- 
gered in the copses beside every homestead, the 
" pannage woods " of beech and oak, and the " barren 
woods " of other timber that gave no mast to the 
swineherd. 
Its But in spite of all, the work of civilization had 

"^"lifi.^" begun. Little boroughs that, small as they were, 
already formed centres of social and industrial life 
were rising beside the harbors of the coast or clus- 
tering under the shelter of the great abbeys. Even 
where the bulk of the land lay waste, pastures^ 

^ At the Conquest, the Bishop was the largest proprietor in the 
whole shire ; he held, in fact, a tenth of it, while twice as much was 
held by religious houses at Shaftesbury, Cerne, Milton, and Abbots- 
bury. — Eyton, Dorset Domesday, 1 56. 

= Eyton, Dorset Domesday, 152. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 7 

stretched along the lower slopes of the moorland, chap, i. 
whose herbage, though too rough and broken for The 
the scythe, gave fair grazing ground to the herds of Ecgberht. 
the township, while by stream and river ran the 
meadow-lands of homestead after homestead, clear 
of shrub and thicket, girt in by ditch and fence. 
About the homestead stretched the broad acres of 
the corn-land, with gangs of eight oxen, each drag- 
ging its plough through the furrows. All the features 
of English life, in "fact all its characteristic figures, 
were already there. We see mills grinding along 
the burns, the hammer rings in the village smithy, 
the thegn's hall rises out of its demesne, the parish 
priest is at his ma,ss-book in the little church that 
form.s the centre of every township, reeves are gath- 
ering their lord's dues, forester and verderer wake 
the silent woodland with hound and horn, the moot 
gathers for order and law beneath the sacred oak or 
by the gray stone on the moor, along the shore the 
well-to-do saltmen are busy with their salt-pans, and 
the fishers are washing their nets in the little coast 
hamlets, and setting apart the due of fish for their 
lords.' 

Side by side, however, with this industrial change influe7ue 
in the temper and aspect of the country, was going ^^;„vj"' 

^ No manor was complete without its mill, and Domesday gives 
272 mills in Dorset, some simply winter-mills, some on streamlets 
that have now wholly vanished. Most of the smiths lived in the 
country towns. Though salt was already dug from the Cheshire 
mines, the want of communication forced each district to supply 
itself as it could, and we find in Domesday between seventy and 
eighty saltmen along the Dorset coast, seemingly villeins, but pay- 
ing such large rent as to prove their trade a profitable one. Fishers, 
too, were found along the coast, villeins like the saltmen, and like them 
paying dues to their lords. — Eyton, Dorset Domesday, pp. 50, 51. 



8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. on a far more profound change in its moral life. 
The We have already noted the more striking: and pict- 

England of . , . , . ^ ° ^ 

Ecgberht. uresque sides of the revolution which had been 
wrought in the displacement of the old faith and the 
adoption of the new — the planting of a Church on 
the soil with its ecclesiastical organization, its bish- 
ops, its priests, its court, and its councils, its language, 
its law, above all, the new impulse given to political 
consolidation by the building up of Britain into a 
single religious communion. But these results of 
the new faith were small and unimportant beside 
the revolution which was wrought by it in individual 
life. From the cradle to the grave it had forced on 
the Englishman a new law of conduct, new habits, 
new conceptions of life and society. It entered 
above all into that sphere within which the individ- 
ual will of the freeman had been till now supreme — 
the sphere of the home ; it curtailed his powers over 
child and wife and slave ; it forbade infanticide, the 
putting away of wives, or cruelty to the serf. It 
challenged almost every social conception ; it denied 
to the king his heritage of the blood of the gods ; it 
• proclaimed slavery an evil, war an evil, manual labor 
a virtue. It met the feud face to face by denounc- 
ing revenge. It held up gluttony and drunkenness, 
the very essence of the old English " feast," as sins. 
It claimed to control every circumstance of life. It 
interfered with labor-customs by prohibitions of toil 
on Sundays and holydays. It forced on a rude 
community, to which bodily joys were dear, long and 
painful fasts. Even profounder modifications were 
brought about by the changes it wrought in the per- 
sonal history of every Englishman. Ceremonialism 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. g 

hung round every one in those old days from the chap. i. 
cradle to the grave, and by the contact with Christen- The 
dom the whole character of English ceremonialism Ecgberht. 
was altered. The very babe felt the change. Bap- 
tism succeeded the " dragging through the earth " 
for Hertha. A new kin was created for child and 
parents in the " gossip " of the christening. The 
next great act of life, marriage, remained an act 
done before and with assent of the fellow-villagers ; 
but new bonds of affinity limited a man's choice ; 
and while the old hand-plighting and wed survived, 
the priest's blessing was added. The burial-rite was 
as completely altered. The burial-fire was abolished; 
and instead of resting beneath his mound, like Beo- 
wulf, on some wind-swept headland or hill, the Chris- 
tian warrior slept with his fellows in his lowly grave 
beneath the shade of the village church. 

But if the old faith was beaten by the new, it was ^^^ ^^.^^fi 

^IVtttl- 

long in being killed. A hundred years after the Heathen- 
conversion of Kent, King Wihtrad had still to for- 
bid Kentishmen "offering to devils.'" At the very 
close of the eighth century synods in Mercia and 
Northumbria were struggling against the heathen 
practice of eating horse-flesh' at the feast to Woden. 
In spite of this resistance, however, Wodenism was 
so completely vanquished that even the coming of 
the Danes failed to revive it. The Christian priest 
had no longer to struggle against the worship of 
Thunder or of Frigga. But the far older nature- 
worship, the rude fetichism which dated back to ages 

1 Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 41. 

'^Confess. Ecgberti, Thorpe, Anc. Laws, ii. 163; Haddan and 
Stubbs, Councils, iii. 459. 



lO THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. long before history, had tougher and deeper roots. 
The The new rehgion could turn the nature-deities of 

Ecfberht. this primeval superstition into devils, its spells into 
magic, its spaewives into witches, but it could never 
banish them from the imagination of men ; it had, in 
the end, even to capitulate to the nature-worship, to 
adopt its stones and its wells, to turn its spells into 
exorcisms and benedictions, its charms into prayers. 
How persistent was the strength of the older belief 
we see even at a later time than we have reached. 
" If witches or diviners," says Eadward, "perjurers or 
morth-workers, or foul, defiled, notorious adulteresses 
be found anywhere within the land, let them be 
driven from the country and the people cleansed, 
or let them wholly perish within the country." ' 
y^thelstan, Eadmund, and ^thelred' are as vigor- 
ous in their enactments; and the Church Councils 
were fierce in their denunciations of these lower 
superstitions. " We earnestly forbid all heathen- 
dom," says a canon of Cnut's day. " Heathendom is 
that men worship idols ; that is, that they worship 
heathen gods, and the sun or the moon, fire or rivers, 
water-wells or stones, or great trees of any kind ; or 
that they love witchcraft or promote ' morth-work ' 
in any wise, or by ' blot ' or by ' fyrht,' or do any- 
thing of like illusions." ' " If witches or diviners, 
morth-workers or adulteresses, be anywhere found 
in the land, let them be diligently driven out of t'he 
country, or let them wholly perish in the country, 
save that they cease and amend."' The effort of 
the kings and the Church was far from limiting it- 

* Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 173. * Ibid. i. 203, 247, 317. 

' Laws of Cnut. — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 379. * Ibid. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jj 

self to words. In the tenth century we hear of the chap. i. 
first instance of a death in England for heresy, in The 
the actual drowning of a witch-wife at London E^gbwht 
Bridge.' 

But against many a heathen usasfe even Councils survival 

^ -' , ^ . of heathen 

did not struggle. Easter fires, Mayday fires, Mid- custovis. 
summer fires, with their numerous ceremonies, the 
rubbing the sacred flame,° the running through the 
glowing embers, the throwing flowers on the fire, the 
baking in it and distributing large loaves and cakes, 
with the round dance about it, remained village 
customs. At Christmas the entry of the boar's 
head, decked with laurel and rosemary, recalled the 
sacrifice of the boar to Frigga at the Midwinter 
feast of the old heathendom. The autumn feast 
lingered on unchallenged in the village harvest- 
home, with the sheaf, in old times a symbol of the 
god, nodding, gay with flowers and ribbons, on the 
last wagon. As the ploughman took to his plough 
he still chanted the prayer that, though christened 
as it were by the new faith, remained in substance a 
cry to the Earth-Goddess of the old, " Earth, Earth, 
Earth, Mother Earth, grant thee the Almighty One, 
grant thee the Lord, acres waxing, and sprouts wan- 
toning . . . and the broad crops of barley, and the 
white wheat-crop, and all crops of earth." So, as 
he drove the first furrow he sang again, " Hail, 
Mother Earth, thou feeder of folk, be thou growing 
by goodness of God, filled with fodder, the folk to 
feed."^ 

But if Christianity failed in winning a complete The 

* Cod. Dip. 591. ^ Kemble, Sax. in England, i. 360. 

^ Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, etc., i. 402-405. 



12 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. victory in this strife with the primeval religion, 
The which the tradition of ages had almost made a part 

E^fbwht of human thought and feeling, its outer victory over 
individual and social life was unquestioned. One of 
its momentous results was the intrusion into the 
social system of a new class — that of the clergy. 
The shorn head had its own social rights. Bishop, 
priest, lesser clerk, had each his legal " wer " as well 
as king, thegn, ceorl. The churchmen formed a 
distinct element in the state, an element to which, in 
numbers, wealth, influence, jurisdiction, character, 
nothing analogous existed in the older English 
society ; a class with its own organization, rule, laws, 
discipline, carefully defined by written documents, in 
face of a world where all was yet vague, fluctuating, 
traditional. But this class had hardly taken its 
place in English society when influences from with-, 
out and from within began to modify its relation to 
the general body of the state ; and yet more radical 
modifications were brought about by the Danish 
wars. The very character of the Church waS' 
changed. English Christianity had in its earlier 
days been specially monastic. But the development 
of the country was fast changing the relation of 
monasticism to its religious needs. The earlier 
monasteries had been practically mission-stations — 
centres from which preachers went out to convert 
the country, and from which, after its conversion, 
priests were still sent about to conduct its worship. 
But as the country became Christian the place of 
these missionaries was taken by the parish priest. 
The influence of the unmonastic clergy, the seculars, 
as they were termed, superseded that of the regu- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. j^ 

lars. It was not by monasteries, but by its parochial chap. i. 
organization, that the Church was henceforth to pen- The 
e-trate into the very heart of English society. Ecgberht. 

It was only by slow degrees that the parish, or ^^ 
kirkshire as it was then called, attained a settled ^°''''^''^^^.''/ 
form. The three classes of churches which we find 
noted in the laws mark so many stages in the re- 
ligious annexation of the land. The minster, or 
mother church, which levied dues over wide tracts,' 
recalled the earlier days when the Church still had 
an exclusively monastic form, and its preachers went 
forth from mountain centres to evanorelize the 
country. The next stage was represented by the 
manorial church, the establishment within this wide 
area by lord after lord of churches on their own 
estates ' for the service of their dependants, the ex- 
tent of whose spiritual jurisdiction was at first coin- 
cident with that of the estate itself. A third class, 
of small churches without burial-grounds, repre- 
sented the growing demands of popular religion. 
From Baeda s letter to Archbishop Ecgberht we see 
that the establishment of manorial churches, that is, 
of what we commonly mean by a parochial system, 
was still far from complete, at least in Northumbria, 
in the middle of the eighth century ; but in the half 
century that followed, it had probably extended itself 
fairly over the land. An attempt was also made to 
provide a settled livelihood for the parish priests in 
the " tithe," or payment of a tenth of the farm- 
produce by their parishioners ; ' but the obligation to 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 263, 265 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 262. 

^ See Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 191, 263. 

^ " A tithe of young by Pentecost, and of earth-fruits by All Hal- 



14 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. pay this was still only imperfectly recognized, and 
The the repeated injunctions of kings and synods from 

Ecgberht. ^thclstan downwards witness, by their repetition, to 
the general disobedience. It is probable that the 
priest as yet relied far more for his subsistence on 
his dues, on the " plough-alms " after Easter, the 
" church-shot " at Martinmas, and " light-shot " thrice 
in the year, as well as the " soul-shot " that was paid 
at the open grave. 

'^^anctthf Nothing is more remarkable in this extension of 

totvnship. t;he ecclesiastical system than the changes wrought 
by it in the original unit of English social life. The 
stages by which the township passed into its modern 
form of the parish, and by which almost every trace 
of its civil life successively disappeared, are obscure 
and hard to follow, but the change began with the 
first entry of the Christian priest into the township.' 
The village church seems often to have been built 
on the very mound that had served till then for the 
gatherings of the tunsfolk. It is through this that 
we so often find in later days the tun-moot held in 
the church-yard or ground about the church ; and the 
common practice even now of the farmers gathering 
for conference outside the church porch before 
morning service may preserve a memory of this 
freer open-air life of the moot before it became 
merged in the parish vestry. The church thus be- 
came the centre of village life ; it was at the church- 
door as in the moot, that " banns " were proclaimed, 
marriages or bargains made ; even the " fair," or 

lows mass." — Laws of ^thelred. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 319. See 
Laws of Eadward and Guthrum, ibid. p. 171. 
' Stubbs, Const. Hist, i, 96, 104, 260. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 15 

market, was held in the church-yard, and the village chap. i. 
feast, an institution no doubt of immemorial an- The 
tiquity, was held on the day of the saint to which Ecfbwiit. 
the church was dedicated ; while the priest himself, 
as its custodian, displaced more and more the tun- 
reeve or elder. It was he who preserved the weights 
and measures of the little community,' who headed 
the "beating" of its bounds, who administered its 
oaths and ordeals," who led its four chosen men to 
hundred-moot or folk-moot, and sometimes even to 
the field. The revolution which was transforming 
the free township into the manor of a lord aided in 
giving the priest a public position. Though the 
lord's court came to absorb the bulk of the work of 
the older tun-moot, the regulation and apportionment 
of the land, the enforcement of by-laws, the business 
of its police, yet the tun-moot retained the little that 
grant or custom had not stripped from it ; and it is 
thus that, in its election of village officers, of church- 
warden and waywarden, as well as in its exercise 
of the right of taxation within the township for the 
support of church and poor, we are enabled to recog- 
nize in the parish vestry, with the priest at its head, 
the survival of the village-moot which had been the 
nucleus of our early life.' 

Without, the new faith brous^ht Ensfland for the P^krim- 

... <^s^^- 

first time, as we have seen, mto religious contact 

with the western world through the mission-work of 

Boniface and his followers in Germany, and into 

political contact with it through the relations which 

^ Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, i. 171. 

* Ibid. ii. 132 et seq. 

^ Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 104. 



1 6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP^i. this mission work established with the Empire of 
The the Franks. But a social contact of a far closer and 

Ecgberht. more national kind was brought about by the growth 
of pilgrimages. At the time which we have reached, 
pilgrimages were among the leading features of Eng- 
lish life. The spell which the mere name of Rome 
had thrown over Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop had 
only wrought the more widely as years went on. 
From churchman it passed to layman, and the en- 
thusiasm reached its height when English kings 
laid down their crowns to become suppliants at the 
shrine of the apostles. Fresh from his slaughter of 
the Jutes in the Isle of Wight, the West-Saxon 
Ceadwalla " went to Rome, being desirous to obtain 
the peculiar honor of being washed in the font of 
baptism within the church of the blessed apostles; 
for he had learned that in baptism alone the entrance 
of heaven is opened to mankind, and he hoped that 
laying down his flesh as soon as he was baptized, he, 
being cleansed, should immediately pass to the eter- 
nal joys of heaven. Both which things came to pass 
as he had conceived them in his mind. For com- 
ing to Rome»" in 689, " he was baptized on the holy 
Saturday before Easter Day, and being still in his 
white garment he fell sick, was freed from the flesh," 
on the 20th of April, " and was associated with the 
blessed in heaven." ' Twenty years later a king of 
the Mercians and a king of the East Saxons quitted 
their thrones to take the tonsure at Rome," and in 
725 even Ine of Wessex gave up the strife with the 
anarchy about him, and made his way to die amidst 
the sacred memories of the holy city. 
' Bseda, H. E. lib. v. c. 7. "" Ibid. lib. v. c. 19. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. j^ 

The pilgrimages of the kings gave a new energy chap, l 
to the movement, and from this time the pilgrims' The 
way was thronged by groups of English folk, " noble ^gberti? 
and ceorl, layman and clerk, men and women." ' ~.^ 
The dangers and hardships of the journey failed to dangers. 
deter them. The road which the pilgrims followed 
was mainly the same by which English travellers 
nowadays reach Italy; they landed at Quentavic 
near Boulogne, which was then the chief port of 
the northern coast of Gaul, and, crossing the high 
grounds of Burgundy at Langres," journeyed along 
the Saone valley and Savoy to the passes of Mount 
Cenis. It was in these Alpine districts that the 
troubles of the pilgrims reached their height ; for if 
an Archbishop of Canterbury could be frozen to 
death in traversing them,' we may conjecture how 
severe must have been the sufferings of poorer 
travellers ; but to the natural hardships of the jour- 
ney was added the hostility of their fellow-men. To 
the robber lords of the mountain valleys pilgrims 
were a natural prey. It was in vain that Offa and 
Cnut alike sought protection for their subjects from 
Charles the Great and the Emperor Conrad. Im- 
perial edicts told little on the greed of these hungry 
mountain wolves ; an archbishop was plundered in 
Cnut's own day; and soon after the marauders were 
lucky enough to pillage three bishops as well.* It 
was in vain that the wayfarers gathered into com- 

^ Baeda, H. E. lib. v. c. 7, " Quod his temporibus plures de gente 
Anglorum, nobiles, ignobiles, laici, clerici, viri et feminae, certatim 
facere, consuerunt." 

■^ Bseda, Lives of Abbots of Wearmouth, sec. 21. 

^ Will. Malm.,Gest. Pontif. (Opera, ed. Migne, col. 1453). 

* Angl. Sacr. ii. 129. 

2 



l8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. panics for mutual protection ;* for the country with 
The its defiles and precipices was itself on the side of 

E°|bwht their assailants, and in the opening of the tenth 
century we hear of the surprise and slaughter of two 
bodies of English pilgrims in the mountains. 
toluiarit' "^^^ neither the dangers of the journey nor the 
fever that awaited them at its close checked the rush 
^ of pilgrims.' The increase in number, indeed, had 
been accompanied by a falling off in the character 
of the travellers. In some cases the exemption from 
port-dues which was granted to pilgrims seems to 
have been used as a cover for smuggling; w^hile the 
custom of enforcing a visit to the shrine of St. Peter 
as a penance for ecclesiastical crimes must have in- 
troduced a criminal element into the pilgrim com- 
panies. The association was the easier, as the un- 
shorn hair and beard which the law imposed on the 
" banished " man was also the customary mark of 
the pilgrim. Poverty, too, told hardly on the virtue 
of the women devotees ; and Boniface, with a touch 
of priestly exaggeration, protests that by the middle 
of the eighth century Englishwomen of evil life 
could be found in every city in Lombardy.' But the 
religious impulse never ceased to supply worthier 
pilgrims than these; there was indeed so constant 
a stream of Englishmen traversing Rome from 
shrine to shrine, listening to its wild legends, gather- 
ing relics, books, gold-work, and embroidery, that it 

* We find eighty Englishmen in the train of Abbot Ceolfrid of 
Wearmouth. — Bseda, Lives of Abbots of Wearmouth, sec. 21. 

^ " Magna febris fatigatio advenas iUic venientes visitare seu 
gravare solet." — Life of St. Winibald, ap. Canis. p. 126, quoted by 
Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, ii. 127. 

* Lett. Bonif. (ed. Giles), Ixiii. p. 146 ; cf. xlix. p. 104, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jq 

was necessary by Offa's day to found a distinct chap. i. 
quarter of the town, called the " Saxon School," for The 
their reception and shelter. Ecfbe^ht. 

It would be hard to trace out the multifold forms j^^^^^ 
in which the new relisfion impressed itself upon the '^"'^ 
social and political organization of the people whom iet'c 
it had won. We have already seen the influence 
which it exerted on the intellectual development of 
the country; but if the art of writing, as the mission- 
aries introduced it, made a revolution in our litera- 
ture, it made an even greater revolution in our law. 
Law, as all early tribes understood it was simply the 
custom of each separate people as uttered from 
memory by its " law-man," under check of his as- 
sessors and of the gathered folk. Such utterances 
were looked on as changeless and divine. The au- 
thority of the past was, in fact, unquestioned; the 
people itself was conscious of no power to change 
the customs of its fathers ; and it was only by an 
unconscious adaptation to the varying circumstances 
of each generation that this oral law was ceaselessly 
modified. But with the writing down of these cus- 
toms the whole conception of law was changed. 
Not only was its sacred character, as well as the 
mystery which veiled its sources in the memory of 
the law-man, taken from it, but the mere writinsf 
them down fixed and hardened the customs them- 
selves and took from them their power of adapta- 
tion and self-development; for change in the laws 
could henceforth only be wrought consciously, and 
on grounds of reason or necessity which questioned 
or set aside the authority they drew from the 
past. 



20 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. What caused this revolution to be so little felt 
The was the slowness with which it was wrought. Great 
?cgbTrlf as was the fame of ^thelberht's code among schol- 
^j ars like Baeda, it was long before the rival states 
English followed the example of Kent. There is nothing to 
warrant us in believing that written law reached 
Wessex before Ine, or Mercia before Offa, or that 
it ever reached Northumbria at all. The sphere, too, 
of the written code remained a narrow and partial 
one ; it restricted itself, for the most part, to such 
customs as were affected by the new moral concep- 
tions which Christianity brought in and the new 
social order it created, or to the changes in police or 
in land-tenure which sprang from the natural ad- 
vance of population and wealth.* ^thelberht's laws 
are little more than a record of the customary fines 
for penal offences, with a provision for the legal 
status of the new Christian priesthood," and in the 
Kentish codes that follow, it is mainly on the eccle- 
siastical side that the area of legislation is widened.' 
Ine found himself forced by the advance of industry, 
and by a new state of public order, to deal largely 

^ The earliest codes we possess are those of Kent — the laws of 
^thelberht (ab. 600), those of Hlothere and Eadric (673-685), and 
those of Wihtraed (ab. 690). Ine's laws (676-705) are our only 
West- Saxon code. The Mercian code of Offa (755-794). though 
used by .Alfred in his compilation, is now lost. 

'■^ Out of ninety clauses, forty-one fix the fines for injury to various 
parts of the body. Almost all the laws refer to violent attacks on 
person or property: there is no mention of trade or agriculture. 
The Church is mentioned in the first provision alone. 

^ The Church is not mentioned in Hlothere and Eadric's laws, of 
whose sixteen provisions about half are fines for violence, the rest 
being, for the most part; regulations as to plaints in a suit, chapmen, 
and man-stealing ; but those of Wihtrsed are almost wholly eccle- 
siastical. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 2 1 

with the subjects of agriculture and police," while chap, i. 
fresh provisions were needed to regulate the position The 
of the Welsh who had submitted to his sword ; but Ecfberht 
in other ways the bounds of his legislation are as 
narrow as those of the Kentish code ; nor, so far as 
we can gather from Alfred's compilation, were 
those of 0£fa any wider. To the last, indeed, the 
whole of our family law, with the bulk of our village 
and of our land law, remained purely oral. 

The new moral ideas which were venerated alike ^"^l^r 

■ Englisli 

by Christianity and by the settlement of the com- junspm- 

... . deuce. 

munity itself in more peaceful and industrious form 
told with equal force on English jurisprudence. A 
glance at the early history of our national justice 
shows that its original groundwork was the right 
of feud. Older than " the peace of the folk," far 
older than " the king's peace," which was to succeed 
it, was the " frith " or peace of the freeman himself — 
the right that each man had to secure for himself 
safe life and sound limb. He lay, as the phrase ran 
then, " in his own hand." ' It was his right to fight 

' A fourth of Ine's laws are concerned with agriculture in some 
way or other, such as the fencing of lands, protection of woods, 
cattle -stealing and maiming, trespass, firing of fences, etc. Few 
relate to acts of violence, but nearly a quarter of the whole code is 
concerned with theft, while the subject of trade comes for the first 
time prominently forward. Legal procedure, again, is largely treat- 
ed. Under internal police we may place the provisions for deter- 
mining the relations of a man with his lord, for regulating the 
quitting of lands, and the like. The laws against mutilation of 
cattle, no doubt records of early custom, are really directed against 
damage done to what was the general medium of exchange, for a 
mutilated beast was useless for purposes of barter. 

* " Mund," or " hand," meant the protection conferred by any one 
and the peace consequent on it, and " mund-bryce," or " hand- 
breach," was the violent breaking in on this peace and the sum paid 



2 2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. his foe, his right, and even liis duty, personally to 
The exact vengeance for wrong done to him ; and his 
Ec|S? kinsmen were bound by their tie of blood to aid 
— him alike in self-defence and in revenge. Traces of 
this older state of things, in which every freeman 
was his own absolute guardian and avenger, ran 
through the whole structure of our later jurispru- 
dence and procedure. A man might slay one whom 
he found in his own house within closed doors with 
his wife, or daughter, or sister, or mother ; ' he might 
slay the thief whom he caught red-handed in the' 
actual commission of his theft/ or the accused man 
who would not come in peacefully to make answer 
to the charge.' But as a general right, that of un- 
regulated vengeance had long passed away before 
Saxon or Engle reached Britain. The conquerors 
came as "folks;" and the very existence of a folk 
implied a " folk-frith " of the community as a whole. 
Every man of the folk lay in " the folk's hand ;" and, 
wrong-doer as he might be, it was only when the 
" hand " was opened, and its protection withdrawn, 
that the folk could suffer him to be maimed or slain." 
The earliest conception, therefore, of public justice 

as atonement for such a " breach of the peace."— Essays in Anglo- 
Saxon Law (Boston), p. 279. Even in later days we may note that 
before paying the " wite," or fine for the breach of the " folk-peace," 
a culprit has to pay the " bot," or atonement to the wronged man 
for the breach of his own peace. 

^ LI. Alfred, 4 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 91. 

* LI. Ine, 12, 16, 21, 28, 35 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 111-125. 
^ LI. Eadw. and Guthr. 6 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 171. 

* " It was a fundamental rule of German law that vengeance must 
be authorized by previous permission of the Court, or if it preceded 
the judgment, it must afterwards be justified before the tribunal."— 
Essays in Ang.-Sax. Law, p. 264. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



23 



was a solemn waiver on the part of the community chap. i. 
of its right and duty of protection in the case of one The 
who had wronged his fellow- member of the folk. E^lbJrht. 
Till such a waiver was given the wrong-doer re- 
mained in the folk's " mund ;" and to act against 
him without such a waiver, or without appeal to the 
folk, was to act against the folk itself, for it was a 
breach of the peace or frith to which his " mund " 
entitled him. It was the demand for such a with- 
drawal of the public protection that constituted the 
trial, and the folk were the only judges of the de- 
mand. Thrice, and before good witness, had the 
summons to the folk-moot, or court, to be given by 
the accuser to the man he charged with the crime, 
and that at his own house, at the sunsetting, and 
seven days before the moot. Refusal thrice repeated, 
on the part of the accused, to hearken to the sum- 
mons to make answer in the folk-moot, or to submit 
to its doom, was a contempt of the folk; but only 
after threefold refusal was the folk's " mund " with- 
drawn from him ; till then the wronged man who 
sought his own vengeance for the wTong broke the 
folk-frith and became a wrong-doer in his turn. 

It was thus that folk-moot and hundred-moot as- The fend 
sumed a judicial character. Originally they were folk. 
no courts of justice in the modern sense of the word ; 
they did not decide on the truth or falsehood of the 
\ charge made, still less did they assign a punishment 
for wrong done. The wrong was still between man 
and man; its punishment, if punished it was, must 
be exacted by the wronged man, or his kinsfolk, from 
the wrong-doer by sheer fighting ; but ere the fight 
could begin the leave of the folk at large had to be 



24 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. sought and given. The license ran in words long 
The preserved in English law, " homini liceat pugnare," 

Ec|be°ht. " you may fight." ' But before such a license could 
be procured, it was needful that the folk should de- 
cide that the man had a right to fight; and the ac- 
cused thus found himself fronted by the oath," the 
solemn appeal to heaven. It may be that here again 
men looked on their fellow-men as being in the 
" mund," not only of the folk, but, in a higher sense, 
of the gods they served, and that, as the appearance 
of the accuser before the moot was a seekins^ for the 
discharge of the wrong-doer from the protection of 
the folk, so the oath was a seeking for his discharge 
from the protection of his heavenly lord and guar- 
dian. But whether such a conception, or more dim 
and vague ideas of awe and dread, as of a vengeance 
of the gods on men who wronged them by falsehood, 
gave birth to the oath, it was the soul of the ju- 
dicial process before the folk-moot. By a fore-oath 
the accuser stated his charge against the accused ; ' 
and if the accused met oath with oath the appeal 
was complete. With the truth or falsehood of the 
charge the folk had nothing to do : what it had to 
do was to judge whether the charge was of such a 
sort, and made in such a way, as to give the accuser 
fair ground for seeking amends from the accused. 
If such was its judgment, the folk withdrew its 
" mund," and suffered the two contending parties to 
waofe their war. 

' Alfred, 42 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 91. 

^ See the collection of oaths in Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 179-185. 
' He might show, without oath, the wound with which he charged 
him, and this stood in place of the oath. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 25 

But its jurisdiction was not yet exhausted. As a chap. i. 
people interested in its own peace and order, the The 
folk had still the right, as it had the power, to deter- Ecgbwht. 
mine how this war should be waged. Even in the ^ 
earliest days custom had thrown its bonds round ^^«««'-f of 

. , , the fend. 

the wild right of private war. It had forbidden all 
secret vengeance, such as poisoning, all mutilation 
or cold-blooded cruelty, all concealment of the deed. 
Though in vengeance, or self-defence, a man might 
slay his foe if he met him, yet " If a man slay an- 
other man in revenge, or self-defence," ran a law 
which, late as the date of its embodiment in writing- 
may be, is clearly a record of primeval usage, " let 
him take to himself none of the goods of the dead, 
neither his horse, nor helmet, nor shield, nor any 
money, but in wonted manner let him arrange the 
body of the dead man, his head to the west, his feet 
to the east, upon his shield, if he have it ; and let 
him drive deep his lance, and hang there his arms, 
and to it rein in the dead man's steed ; and let him 
go to the nearest vill and declare his deed to the 
first man he meets, that he may make proof and 
have defence against the kindred and friends of the 
man he has slain." ' The same web of custom threw 
itself round the wider warfare of the kin. As late 
as the days of Alfred ' we see the kindred of the 
slain man gathered, their quick secret ride over the 
country, the foe's house surrounded and besieged ; 
but not for seven days, ran law or custom, must at- 
tack be made ; for seven days the vengeance-seeker 
and his kinsfolk must watch the house, while the 

' Hen. I. 83, sec. 6 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 591. 
° LI. .Alfred, 42 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 91. 



26 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR I. wrong-doer within takes counsel with them of his 
The household whether to surrender or to fight. If 

JE^IbSht. within these days he chose to surrender, for thirty 
days more they lay about the house, while the wrong- 
doer sent about his friends and kinsmen to find 
men who would aid him in the atonement for his 
crime ;' and it was not till these were gathered that, 
taking one of his house as a spokesman, he gave 
him pledge that he w^ould make full atonement, and 
with this pledge the spokesman came forth to the 
kindred of the slain. Again, in their turn, these gave 
pledge that the slayer might draw near in peace 
and himself give pledge for the "wer," or atone- 
ment for his crime. It was only when he stood be- 
fore them and gave his free pledge for this payment, 
and strengthened it by giving security for its com- 
pletion, that the feud was at an end. 
Ead- With all these bounds and limitations, however, 

mtcnd s re- _ ' _ ' 

forms, the feud became more and more incompatible with 
the growing sense of humanity and public order. 
" Both I and all of us," said Eadmund, in a proclama- 
tion to his people," " hold in horror the unrighteous 
and manifold fightings that exist among ourselves." 
It jarred, too, with the conception of personal re- 
sponsibility that Christianity had introduced, and 
which was deepening as the bonds of kinship grew 
weaker with the progress of society. Eadmund's 
law, indeed, struck a heavy blow at the very principle 
of kinship — " If henceforth any man slay another, 
let him bear the feud himself (save that by the aid 
of his fi-iends and within twelve months he make 

' Ll. Eadmund, ii. 7 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 251. 
* Ll. Eadmund ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 246. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



27 



amends with the full wer), to be borne as he may. chap. 1. 
If his kinsmen forsake him and will not pay for The 
him, it is my will that all the kindred be out of feud, Ecgberht 
save the actual doer of the deed, provided that they 
do not give him either food or protection. . . . 
Moreover, if any of the other man's kinsmen take 
vengeance upon any man save the actual doer of 
the deed, let him be foe to the king and all his 
friends, and forfeit all that he has." ' It was only 
slowly that so great a change in custom and feeling 
as this law implies could be actually brought about, 
and the feud still remained, however hampered by 
reforms, the base of our criminal procedure ; but its 
enactment shows that the change had begun, and 
that two conceptions, from whose union our modern 
justice was to spring — the conception of personal re- 
sponsibility for crime, and the conception of crime 
as committed primarily not against the individual 
but against the public peace — were from this time 
to exercise a deepening influence on national senti- 
ment. 

In the reforms of Eadmund, however, we have ..T'^'f, 

' jotk s 

passed long beyond the jurisprudence of the time j^'stke;' 
of Ecgberht. At the opening of the ninth century 
English thought was still far from our modern con- 
ceptions of justice or law — from the conception of 
crime as committed primarily against the public 
peace, as cognizable only by public authority, and as 
corrected by public punishment. As yet, and for 
centuries to come, all that either king or community 
attempted to do was to bring the right of private 
vengeance and self-protection within definite and 

^ Ll. Eadmund ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 249. 



28 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. customary bounds, to subject it to the previous 
The sanction and permission of the folk in the folk-moot, 

Eclberht. to provide means for averting it where no good 
grounds existed for its exercise by solemn oath or 
ordeal of innocence on the part of the accused, or, 
where such grounds really existed, to provide and 
extend the sphere of a fixed and customary atone- 
ment in place of actual blood-shedding. Scant, how- 
ever, as such a justice may seem to modern eyes, 
it would have been practically effective for the pur- 
poses of public order had any adequate machinery 
existed for imposing the will of the folk on accuser 
^ and accused. But the folk-moot had no direct means 
of enforcing its doom. If a man thrice refused, 
after due summons, to appear before it, or appeared 
but refused to bow to its decision, he put himself, 
indeed, by his very act, out of the folk, and out of its 
protection ; he became, in a word, an " outlaw," who 
might be hunted down like a wolf, and knocked on 
the head by any man who met him.' But beyond 
this general hostility the folk had no means of forc- 
ing such an offender to submit to its judgment. A 
yet weightier obstacle to efficient justice was often 
found in the course of procedure itself. Accuser 
and accused brought kinsmen and friends in their 
train to the folk-moot, whether to sway its doom or 
to enforce it, or to guard against vengeance with- 
out law. With such a crowd of adherents at the 
moot, it must always have been hard for meaner 
men to get justice against king's thegn or country 
thegn, and as the nobles rose to a new height above 
the people it was easy for them to hold hundred- 

^ Ess. in Ang.-Sax. Law, 27 1, 275, 283. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 39 

moot, and even folk-moot, at bay. Kent was among chap. i. 
the most civilized and orderly parts of England, but The 
at an even later time than this we find the great EcfbSht. 
men of Kent setting the doom of its folk-moot abso- 
lutely at defiance/ 

It was this difficulty, more than all else, that must ,, f-^^, 

. ... ^^ kings 

have led to the passing of the " folk's justice " into jnstker 
" the justice of the king." From the earliest days 
the king had been recognized not only as a political 
and military leader, but as a judge ; and he was the 
one judge whose position gave him the power of 
enforcing his dooms, for by himself or by his ealdor- 
man the whole military strength of the kingdom or 
shire could be called out to bring a culprit to sub- 
mission. It was natural that as the local courts 
found themselves more and more helpless against 
the great lords they should appeal to a force before 
which the greatest lords must bow; and that the 
baffied Witan of Kent should pray ^thelstan that 
" if any man be so rich or of so great kin that he 
cannot be punished, or will not cease from his 
wrong-doing, you may settle how he may be carried 
away into some other part of your kingdom, be the 
case whose it may, whether of villein or thegn."* 
The extension, too, of thegnhood, and the growth 
of private jurisdictions or sokes, exempt from the 
common jurisdiction of the hundred-moot, gave a 
new scope to the justice of the king." As such 
private jurisdictions grew more and more frequent, 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 217. ^ Ibid. 

^ Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 214, etc. " It is probable that, except in a 
few special cases, the sac and see thus granted were, before the 
Conquest, exemptions from the hundred courts only, and not from 
those of the shire." 



30 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. they not only weakened the older justice of the peo- 
The pie, but forced on the royal court a large develop- 
Eclberht. Hicnt of its judicial activity, if the justice of the 
lords was to be hindered from passing into a means 
of extortion and tyranny. 
/^'^J Such a development was made easy by the very 
coilrt. character of the king's court. The English king 
was a great landowner, and, like other great land- 
owners, he was driven from one " vill " to another 
for actual subsistence. He was in constant motion; 
for payments were made in kind, and it was only by 
moving from manor to manor that he could eat up 
his rents. A Northumbrian king had to consume his 
customary dues in one vill at the foot of the Chevi- 
ots and in another on the Don. A king of Wessex 
had no other means of gathering his rents from his 
demesne on the Exe or on the Thames. The king's 
court, therefore, was really a moving body, a little 
army eating its way from demesne to demense, but 
with a home in our modern sense nowhere, encamp- 
ing at one or another spot only for so long as the 
rent-in-kind sufficed, and then after a day or two 
rollins: onward. In the stories of the time' we see 
the king's forerunners pushing ahead of the train, 
arriving in haste at the spot destined for the next 
halt, broaching the beer-barrels, setting the board, 
slaying and cooking the kine, baking the bread ; till 
the long company come pounding in through the 
muddy roads — horsemen and spearmen, thegn and 
noble, bishop and clerk, the string of sumpter horses, 

1 See, for Ine, Will. Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 49; for 
^thelstan, the Saxon Life of Dunstan (Memorials of Dunstan, 
pp. 17; 1 8)- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^I 

the big wagons with the royal hoard or the royal chap. i. 
wardrobe, and at last the heavy standard borne be- The 
fore the king himself. Then follows the rough jus- iJIbSht. 
tice-court, the hasty council, the huge banquet, the 
fires dying down into the darkness of the night, till 
a fresh dawn wakes the forerunners to seek a fresh 
encampment. 

Such was, in greater or less desfree, the life of "^^^^ 

^ ^ . court on 

every great noble, and such, necessarily, was that of progress. 
the king. But with the growing consolidation of 
England into a single realm these movements took 
a more ceremonious and political form. Custom 
came to regulate the seeming disorder of the royal 
progress ; each manor, each town, knows and makes 
its customary payments in kind ; thegn and villein 
render their customary service ; while the royal clerk 
reads from the custom-roll and ticks off the dues 
paid and the service done. " Watching the king," 
in fact, finding horses for his journey, or boats for 
his sail, guarding his person, supplying his larder, 
become the customary tenures by which towns hold 
their freedom. The progresses grow regular and 
methodical; men know when their king will be 
among them, they know where to bring their suit, 
their plea, their gift to him. As the king moves 
through forest and waste his progress is a chase ; he 
finds his foresters in waiting with the villeins bound 
to customary service in driving the deer. As he 
passes over the " king's highway," landlord and 
thegn are called to give account for broken road 
or broken bridge. In his rough justice-court there 
is the appeal to be heard, the false moneyer to be 
branded, the outlaw to be hanged at the nearest oak. 



32 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP. I. The " king's peace " is about him as he goes ; his 
The " grith," the breach of which no fine can atone for/ 

Ecgberht. Spreads for a given space around his court : a double 
" bot " and fine protects all who are on their way to 
him ; if a brawler fight over his cups in the king's 
hall, he may die at the king's will." The court it- 
self is no longer the, mere train of personal attend- 
ants which followed a provincial king; it is a little 
army that needs its officers to order and marshal it, 
its chamberlain to command the household to deck 
the rough halls with courtly hanging for the king's 
stay, to issue from the hoard the gold drinking-cups 
for the king's table, to pay and command the body- 
guard ; its staller to order its movements, to direct 
the horses, the sumpter mules, the long string of 
wagons, as well as to " park " the vast encampment 
for the night; its dish-thegn and cup-thegn to pro- 
vide the beeves and bread, the wines and ale, for its 
daily consumption. The creation of these great 
officers of the household, some of whom we find 
already existing in Alfred's time, was one of the 
most important results of the royal progresses. But 
a yet more important result was the impulse they 
gave to the change in our system of justice ; for at 
a time when the public needs called for a judicial 
power which should be strong enough to enforce its 
doom upon noble and churl, and supreme alike over 
folk-moot and soke, the progresses of the king car- 
ried such a power into every corner of the realm. 

^oPthe ^^^ development, however, of English justice was 

kingship, but one of the influences that were telling through- 

* ^thelr. iii. ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 293. 
' Ine, sec. 6; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 107. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 33 

out the period on the transformation of the English char i. 
kingship. As England drew together into its Three The 
Kingdoms the wider dominion of the king removed Ecgberht. 
him further and further from his people, lifting him 
higher and higher above the nobles, and clothing him 
more and more with a mysterious dignity. Every 
reign raised the sovereign in the social scale. The 
bishop, once ranked equal with him in value of life, 
sank to the level of the ealdorman. The ealdor- 
man himself, in earlier days the hereditary ruler of 
a smaller state, became a mere delegate of the king. 
The king, if he was no longer sacred as the son of 
Woden, became yet more sacred as "the Lord's 
Anointed." By the very fact of his consecration he 
was pledged to a religious rule, to justice, mercy, and 
good government ; but his " hallowing " invested him 
also with a power drawn not from the will of man, or 
the assent of his subjects, but from the will of God. 
Treason against him thus became the worst of crimes, 
while personal service at his court was held not to 
degrade, but to ennoble. The thegns of his house- 
hold found themselves officers of state ; and the de- 
velopment of politics, the wider extension of home 
and foreign affairs, gradually transformed these royal 
servants into a standing council of ministry for the 
transaction of ordinary administrative business, and 
the reception of judicial appeals. 

The rise of the royal power was furthered by the P,f 
change which passed at this time over the character and the 
of the English noble. Not only was the character ^'"'^' 
of this class profoundly affected by the consolidation . 
of the smaller folks into larger realms, but its whole 
relation to the king was radically changed. The 

3 



34 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP. I. superiority of the setheling over the ceorl was a tra- 
The ditional superiority which reached back to the very 

E^fberht. infancy of the race, and which consisted in an actual 
difference, as both beheved, of blood and origin. The 
tribal king was simply the noblest among the aethe- 
lings. But with the extinction of the smaller king- 
ships, and the subjection of both classes to one of the 
greater monarchies, the position of the hereditary 
noble was changed. He was no longer of the same 
blood with the king ; while the wider area of the state, 
and the number of sethelings it necessarily included 
within it, lowered his individual position and brought 
him nearer to the ceorl. At the same time he was 
being displaced from his older position by nobles of 
a new and distinct class. Service with the kings, as 
we have seen, begot the class of thegns ; and while 
the hereditary noble dwindled with the growth of 
kingship, the noble by service necessarily rose with 
it. An aetheling of the Middle English inevitably 
grew less and less important as the Mercian king- 
dom widened its bounds from sea to sea, while a 
thegn of the Mercian court grew as inevitably great- 
er. And to the greatness that came of his relation 
to a greater master the thegn added a correspond- 
ing superiority of wealth. The possessions of the 
village noble might lift him above his fellow vil- 
lager, but they could not vie with the wide domains 
which the kings of the great states carved out of 
the folkland for their thegns.' The aethelings thus 
died down into a social class, while the thegns took 

1 These grants had become so frequent that even by Ine's time, 
though some gesiths remained landless, this was exceptional. — 
Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. i8r, note 3. 



mot. 



MAR i" J384 . 

THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ,5 

their place as a political nobility dependent on the chap.i. 
crown. The 

A further development of the royal power sprang ^iSt' 
from the changes wrought in the older national in- ^^ 
stitutions by the disappearance of the tribal king- ^'ffy* 
ships in the larger monarchies of the Three Kingdoms. 
The life of the earlier English state was gathered up 
in its folk-moot. There, through its representatives 
chosen in every hundred-moot, the folk expressed and 
exercised its own sovereignty in matters of justice, 
as of peace and war. But when the folk sank into 
a portion of a wider state, its folk-moot sank with it; 
if it still met it was only to exercise one of its older 
functions, that of supreme justice-court, while political 
supremacy passed from it to the court of the far-off 
lord.' And as the folk-moot died down into the later 
shire-moot or county court the folk's influence on 
government came to an end. Folk-moots of Surrey- 
men or South Saxons could exercise no control over 
a king of Wessex. Folk-moots of Hwiccas or North 
Engle could bring no check to bear on a king of Mer- 
cia. Nor was the loss, of this influence made up by 
the control of the nobler class. Beside the folk-moot, 
and acting with it, had stood the Witenagemot, the 
group of aethelings gathered to give rede to the king, 
and through him to propose a course of action to the 
folk. On these the growth of the monarchies did 
not tell as directly as on the folk-moot. Nobles could 
still gather about the king ; and while the folk-moot 
passes out of political notice, the Witenagemot is 
heard of more and more as a royal council. But if 
the name remained, the meeting itself became a whol- 
' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 140, 141. 



36 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. I. ly different one. The decline in the class of cethe- 
The lings, their displacement by the thegn, would alone 

Ecgbwht have altered its character. The distance of the king 
from the nobles' homes, as the lesser realms were 
gathered into the Three Kingdoms, altered it yet 
more. When a West-Saxon king called his Witan 
to Exeter he probably expected few thegns from Sus- 
sex or Kent. When he called them to Kent he can 
hardly have seen many from Cornwall or the Defn- 
Scetan. From the opening of the age of consolida- 
tion, therefore, the Witenagemot naturally changed 
into a mere gathering of bishops and great ealdormen, 
as well as of the royal thegns in service at the court ;* 
and it retained this form under the kings of a single 
England, with just such an increase of numbers as 
necessarily resulted from the welding of the three 
realms into one. The seventeen bishops of the Eng- 
lish sees, about an equal number of ealdormen, whom 
we may again presume to be actual rulers of the va- 
rious folks and under-kingdoms, a few abbots, and 
some fifty or sixty nobles and thegns, comprised the 
list at its fullest. But the usual gatherings hardly 
exceed in number those of Offa's court ; and even 
under later kings, such as Eadgar, the usual Wite- 
nagemots number some nine prelates, five ealdor- 
men, and fifteen thegns.^ 

Such a council might in many ways reflect the 

^ Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 146. The Witenagemot that gathered 
round such a king as Offa consisted only of the five bishops of the 
Mercian kingdom, of the five or six ealdormen who may have ruled 
over the older kingdoms or folks that were included within it, and 
of some ten or a dozen thegns, who probably held high offices in 
the royal household. 

^ See, for the whole of this subject, Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. cap. vi. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 37 

national temper, but it was in no sense a representa- chap, i. 
tive of the nation. On occasions of peculiar solem- The 
nity indeed, such as that of a coronation or the pro- Eclberht. 
mulgation of a code of laws, the old theory of a folk- ^ 
moot ratifying the decisions of the Witan and the c^ianutcr. 
king rose again into life, and the retinues in the 
train of noble and prelate represented by their shouts 
of " Aye, aye," the assent of the collective freemen. 
But such an assent was a mere survival of the past ; 
in practice it was an empty form, and the occasions 
on which it was called for were rare and exceptional.' 
In ordinary times the Witenagemot was little more 
than a royal council, whose members were named 
and summoned by the king,"" and which widened now 
and then into aristocratic assemblies that foreshad- 
owed the " Great Council " of the later Baronage. 

That the movement towards national consolidation '^I'f ^/'^^^ 

Kmsdems. 

should have stopped so long at the creation of the 
Three Kingdoms is one of the problems of our early 
history. But as the eighth century drew to its close 
the internal conditions of these states, and their re- 
lations to one another, showed that the long-delayed 
revolution was near at hand. The most prominent 
cause of the break-up of the political system of the 

^ The decisions of one of ^thelstan's Witenagemots are made in 
common with " tota populi generalitate." — Cod. Dip. 364. But 
" that such gatherings shared in any way the constitutional powers 
of the Witan, that they were organized in any way corresponding 
to the machinery of the folk-moot, that they had any representative 
character, in the modern sense, as having full powers to act on be- 
half of constituents, that they shared the judicial work, or, except 
by applause and hooting, influenced the decisions of the chiefs, there 
is no evidence whatever." — Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 142. 

^ yEthelstan speaks of the Witan at his great meetings as " Witan 
whom the king himself has named." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 241. 



38 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. Three Kingdoms was one that had already told fatally 
The on the lesser kingships. In the earlier life of the 

Efgherht. English peoples, political individuality found its cen- 
tre and representative in their royal stocks, and the 
number of the separate folks was shown in the num- 
ber of their kinoes. Kent and Sussex found room for 
at least two in each realm ; East Anglia and Wessex 
seem at times to have had many ; there were sepa- 
rate royal stocks for peoples like the Hecanas and 
Hwiccas, or the South Mercians and Middle Engle. 
It was only through the extinction or degradation of 
these kingly families that national union was possi- 
ble ; and it is as a main step in bringing this about 
that the formation of the larger states during the 
seventh and eighth centuries is so important in our 
history. With the gradual extension of the Three 
Kingdoms the bulk of the smaller kingships disap- 
peared.' Some kings lingered on for a time as un- 
der-kings ; some sank into ealdormen, who drew their 
power from the appointment of the conquering over- 
lord ; some, no doubt, perished altogether with the 
chances of time and of war." But a new period be- 
gan from the moment that the extinction of the roy- 
al stocks told on the Three Kingdoms themselves. 

Northum- NorthumbHa was no longer the formidable kinaf- 

bria. ^ o ^ _ o 

dom which we have seen carrying its arms to the 
Clyde in the days of Eadberht. The withdrawal of 

' Thus the Lindsey kings were extinct before 678, when their land 
was disputed between Mercia and Northumbria ; nor do we hear 
of any Middle-English king after Peada. The stock of Deira ended 
with Oswini. The kings of Sussex are not heard of after its con- 
quest by Ecgberht, nor those of Wight after its conquest by Cead- 
walla. 

* Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 198, etc. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^q 

that king to a cloister had been the close of its great- ^^ap. i. 
ness, for after a year's reign his son Oswulf was slain The 
by the thegns of his household/ and with his death E^b^iit. 
peace and order seem to have come utterly to an end. 
Oswulf was, in fact, the last undisputed representative 
of the royal line of Bernicia. The kingly house fell 
with him, and from this moment a strife for the crown 
absorbed the whole energy of Northumbria. The 
throne was seized by ^thelwold Moll ;' and a victo- 
ry over his opponents at the Eildon Hills, near Mel- 
rose, so strengthened his power that Offa, just settled 
in Mercia, gave him his daughter to wife. But after 
six years of rule i^thelwold Moll lost his kingdom 
in a fight at Winchanheale in 765 ;' and his place 
was taken by another claimant, Alchred.* The his- 
tory of Northumbria became from this hour a mere 
strife between these rivals and their houses. Al- 
chred, victorious over two risings under ealdormen,' 
was driven in 774 to take refuge among the Picts by 
^thelred, the son of y^thelwold ; but after four years 
of strife yEthelred followed his rival into exile, and 
his successor, Alfwold " the son of Oswulf," interrupts 
for nine years, from 779 to y88, the rule of the war- 
ring houses. Alfwold's reign, however, was as stormy 
as the rest. In one rising an ealdorman was "burnt " 
by two of his fellow-ealdormen, and in 788 another 
ealdorman rose and slew the king." With his slay- 

^ " Occisus ... a sua familia." — Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 758. 

" Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 759. ^ Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 765. 

* Alchred claimed descent from Ida through Bleacmann. — Flor. 
Wore. a. 765 ; but Simeon adds " ut quidam dicunt." — Gest. Reg. 
a. 765. ^thelwold's descent was even more doubtful: "of uncer-_ 
tain descent." ' Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 774. 

'' Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 788. 



40 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. ing the two houses again came to the front ; for two 

The years Alchred's son, Osred, occupied the throne ; 

EclbOTht. and on his flight/ in face of a revolt of his ealdor- 

men, the son of ^thelwold Moll, ^^thelred, was 

again recalled to the kingdom, after eleven years of 

exile. 

Aicuin. ^thelred shrank from no blood-shedding to secure 
his throne. The two children of his predecessor were 
drawn by false oaths from their sanctuary at York 
to be slain at his bidding," and Osred, who was drawn 
by like pledges from Man, found a like doom. For 
a while this ruthlessness seems to have succeeded in 
producing some sort of peace ; but the long anarchy 
of thirty years had left the land a mere chaos of 
bloodshed and misrule, and all that saved it from 
utter ruin was the wide extension of its ecclesiasti- 
cal domains. The waste and bloodshed of its civil 
wars stopped short at the bounds of -the vast posses- 
sions which had been granted to its churches, the 
privilege of sanctuary which they enjoyed gave shel- 
ter to the victims of the strife, and the learning and 
culture of Baeda and of Archbishop Ecgberht still 
found untroubled homes at Jarrow or York. Its in- 
tellectual life was thus able to go on amidst the wreck 
of its political life ; and in the midst of the anarchy 
a scholar passed from the schools of Northumbria 
to become the literary centre of the west. Born 
about 735, within the walls of York, Aicuin had 
reached early manhood at the retirement of Eadberht 
from the throne." He had been intrusted, like other 

^ Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 792. =" Ibid. 

^ For Aicuin, see article on him by Stubbs in Diet. Christ, Biogr. 
vol. i. p. 73- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^i 

noble youths, to Archbishop Ecgberht in his boy- chap. i. 
hood, and was placed under the schoolmaster JEth- The 
elberht, who followed Ecgberht in his see on his Eclberht. 
death. In 766, when Alchred had just mounted the 
throne, he seems to have accompanied yEthelberht 
on a journey to Rome, and some time after his re- 
turn himself took charge of the school of York. The 
years of his teaching there, from 767 to 780, were 
the age of its greatest fame and influence ;' so strange- 
ly, in fact, was the Church isolated from the secular 
fortunes of the realm about it, that amidst the grow- 
ing anarchy of Northumbria not only scholars from 
every part of Britain, but even from Germany and 
Gaul, are said to have crowded to Alcuin's lecture- 
room, while his friend, Archbishop yEthelberht, was 
busy in building a new and more sumptuous church 
at York, as well as in journeys to Rome, in which he 
could gather books for its library. 

It was on his return from a iournev to sret the pal- ^0^'^^^"^- 

■' ^ -' ^ '- ^ una and 

Hum for ^thelberht's successor, in 781, that Alcuin, the 
now the most famous of European scholars, met ' "^ 
Charles the Great at Parma, and was drawn by him 
from his work in Britain to the wider work of spread- 
ing intellectual life among the Franks. But though 
his home was now in a strange land, Alcuin's heart 
still clave to his own Northumbria. The news of 
its fresh disorder, and the slaying of Alfwold in 788, 
drew from him prayer after prayer to Charles for 
leave to revisit his country ; and in 790, soon after 

' " Eo tempore in Eboraica civitate famosus merito scholam 
magister Alchuinus tenebat, undecumque ad se confluentibus de 
magna sua scientia communicans." — Vit. S. Liudgeri, quoted by 
Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. ii. p. 203. 



42 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. the recall of y^thelred Moll to the throne, he seems 
The to have returned to the north of Britain. If so, he 

EcfbMht niust have witnessed the bloody deeds by which 
^thelred strove to secure his crown ; and we cannot 
wonder at his finding omens of ill in " that rain of 
blood which," as he, wrote after his departure to the 
king, " we saw in Lent, at a time when the sky was 
calm and cloudless, fall from the lofty roof of the 
northern aisle of the church of York." ' But he could 
hardly have dreamed how fatally the omen was to be 
fulfilled by the first descent of the Northmen, only a 
few months after his return to Gaul. Their incursion 
again roused civil strife. In the spring of 796 King 
^thelred was slain, and whatever was now the con- 
nection of the Northumbrian with the Prankish court, 
the wrath of Charles against a race whom he de- 
nounced as " murderers of their lords " was hardly al- 
layed by Alcuin's intercession." All cause of inter- 
vention, however, was removed by the accession of 
Eardwulf, who succeeded in restoring order for the 
next ten years ; ' but with the death of Eardwulf, 
in 806, the northern kingdom vanishes from history 
till its submission to Ecgberht, seventeen years later.* 
Broken, indeed, by ceaseless strife, Northumbria 
was ready to fall before a conqueror's sword. But 
no such doom seemed to threaten Mercia. In Mer- 

' Ale. Op. (Migne), pt. i. epist. xiii. 

^ Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 498, 

^ Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 796. 

* In his Gesta Regum, Simeon of Durham practically ceases at 
803 ; there are two ecclesiastical entries in 830 and 846, then from 
849 the chronicle is for some time wholly drawn from southern 
sources, and without reference to the north. In his Historia de 
Dunelmensi Ecclesia, there is a like gap between 793 and 867. 



lilercta. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 45 

cia the royal stock went on unchallenged. No civil chap. i. 
war disturbed the rule of 0£fa or of Cenwulf. No The 
foreign ruler dared to threaten the Middle Kingdom Ec|be°iit. 
as Charles had threatened the North. As the eighth 
century drew to its close, indeed, Mercia seemed 
destined rather to absorb its fellow states than to be 
absorbed by either of them. Northumbria was torn 
by anarchy. Wessex lay almost hidden from sight 
behind the forest-screen of the Andredsweald. All 
that the outer world saw of Britain was the realm of 
the Mercian kings. From Dover to the Ribble, from 
Bath to the Humber, the great mass of the island 
submitted to their sway ; and to the Prankish court 
the lord of this vast domain was already " king of the 
English." The ability of Off a and Cenwulf as rulers, 
as well as the length of their reigns, heightened the 
impression of Mercian strength. But, even at the 
summit of their power, a close observer might have 
seen the inherent weakness of the structure they had 
built up. The kingdom, in fact, was held together 
simply by the sword. It stretched from sea to sea ; 
but both on the eastern and the western coast its 
subject-provinces only waited the hour of trial to turn 
against it. The Welsh of North Wales were ready 
to rise at any moment. Kent, a possession essential 
to the communication of Mercia with the western 
world, had risen against Offa and again risen against 
Cenwulf. The East Anglians were now preparing 
to renew the strife which they had waged for centu- 
ries against the western Engle. And within Mercia 
itself there seems to have been little of that admin- 
istrative organization which might have compensated 
for the hostility of its dependencies. The existence 



44 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP. I. of five great ealdormen seems to point to a perpet- 
The uation of the purely local government in the prov- 

Eefbwiit. inces which made up the central realm. It was 
characteristic, indeed, of the looseness of its political 
structure that Mercia had no marked centre of gov- 
ernment. Northumbria found a centre at York. 
Wessex recognized its royal town in Winchester. 
But Tamworth was simply a royal vill at which the 
Mercian kings dwelt more frequently than elsewhere. 
Mercia, in fact, owed its greatness wholly to the char- 
acter of its individual kings. A single defeat under 
^thelbald had already revealed its inherent weak- 
ness ; and the same revelation was to follow its later 
defeat under Beorhtwulf. 

iVessex. Wesscx, on the other hand, smaller as was its area 
and later as was its development than that of its fel- 
low-kingdoms, had a vigor and compactness which 
neither of them possessed. Its military strength was 
really greater than theirs. From the first moment 
of their descent upon Britain the Gewissas had seized 
a region of surpassing military value. The Gwent 
was a natural fortress, backed by the sea, screened 
from attack on either side by impassable woodlands, 
by Selwood and the Andredsweald, and presenting 
along its front two parallel lines of heights, whose 
steep escarpments rose like walls in face of any as- 
sailants. Their main settlement, Winchester, lay in 
the centre of this region ; and a series of roads which 
diverged from it carried forces easily to any threat- 
ened point of the border. However Wessex might 
grow, the Gwent remained its heart and centre ; and 
the inaccessibility of the Gwent was shown by its 
security from any inroad till the coming of the Danes. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. .c 

Northumbrian hosts might pour over Mid-Britain, chap. i. 
or Mercian hosts carry their ravages over North- The 
umbria, but neither Mercian nor Northumbrian ever E^^gb^e'rh? 
appeared before Winchester. The bulk of the West- 
Saxon fights were fought in the district over Thames ; • 
and if invaders threatened the Gwent itself it was 
only, like Ceolric, to be thrown back discomfited from 
the steeps of Wanborough. Even Wulfhere, after a 
great victory, could penetrate no farther into Wessex 
than the same steep of Ashdown. The varied com- 
position of Ecgberht's kingdom, instead of proving 
a source of weakness, was itself a source of streno-th. 
Its centre was the older Wessex we have described, 
the region between the Andredsweald and the Sel- 
wood ; a district of purely English blood grouped 
round a single political and religious centre at Win- 
chester. To the west lay the newer Wessex, a tract . 
which, indeed, found a single ecclesiastical centre in 
Sherborne, but where Welsh and English blood min- 
gled in the veins of the population, and in which 
the ethnological character varied from the English 
element dominant along the skirts of Selwood to the 
wholly Celtic life of the western Dyvnaint. But this 
newer Wessex was even more West-Saxon in tem- 
per than the Wessex of the Gwent. The slowness of 
its conquest, the gradual settlement of the conquer- 
ors over its soil, had bound it firmly to the house of 
Cerdic, and utterly obliterated its Celtic traditions. 
And, besides this, the two portions were knit togeth- 
er by an administrative order which was hardly known 
elsewhere. Our ignorance of the early history of 
Wessex leaves us no means of tracing the origin of 
this order, but in Ecgberht's day, at least, it was firm- 



46 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. I. ly established. Every folk-district in the realm was 
The placed in the hands of a single ealdorman, an officer 

Ec|berht. who, by this time, must have been of royal appoint- 
ment, and who was above all the leader of its local 
force or " fyrd." It is through the mention of these 
ofhcers that we see that Wessex was, by this time at 
any rate, parted into the administrative divisions that 
it still retains, and that the Somer-s^tan, the Defn- 
ssetan, and the Dor-ssetan had their defined dis- 
tricts one side the Selwood, as the settlers in the 
" Bearroc-wood," the Wil-s^tan, and the original 
Gewissas in their tract about Hampton had on the 
other. 

y^l^.\ It was this political and administrative superiority, 
and even more than its military vigor, which so sudden- 
iigam. j^ ^^^ Wessex at the head of the English states and 
gave into its hands the work of consolidating the 
English peoples. In Ecgberht's day, however, that 
work had hardly begun. Though every one of its 
states had submitted to his sway,' Ecgberht had not 
become a King of England. He had not even be- 
come King of the Mercians, of the East Angles, or 
of the Northumbrians. It was not till Alfred's day, 
a hundred years later, that a King of Wessex could 
call himself also King of the Mercians ; it was not 
till ^thelstan that the ruler who was at once Kinsj 
of the West Saxons and King of the Mercians could 
add to his title that of King of the Northumbrians. 
Even then the bond which united the Three King- 
doms was but the personal bond of their allegiance 
to the same ruler ; and it was not till the close of 
Eadgar's reign that the genius of Dunstan dared to 
' See Making of England, cap. viii. — (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. .7 

create an England and to crown the lord of the three chap. i. 
realms as its national king. But these things were The 
far off in Ecgberht's time. His conquests had given E^||fe^it.^ 
him a supremacy over his fellow-kings, by which they 
and their peoples were bound to pay him tribute and 
to follow him in war. But their life remained in all 
other matters as independent as before. In spite 
of submission and tribute, Northumbria seems to 
have remained almost wholly detached from its over- 
lords. Rival claimants for its throne fouofht on as 
of old, unhindered by any interference from the south, 
and the successors of Ecgberht made not a single 
effort to rescue it from the Dane. East Anglia re- 
mained under its old line of kings, almost as iso-. 
lated as Northumbria from Wessex, and equally un- 
aided by it in the coming struggle. Mercia itself, 
broken as it was by defeat after defeat, was far from 
passing into a mere province of the West-Saxon 
realm ; it retained its old national life as it retained 
its bounds, and though Ecgberht drove its king 
Wiglaf from his throne, he was forced, after three 
years of struggle, to replace him on it. Even in later 
years it was by ties of blood and wedlock, rather 
than by more direct bonds of subjection, that the 
policy of Wessex strove to bring the Midland realm 
beneath its sway. It was, in fact, only by long and 
patient effort that this vague supremacy of the West- 
Saxon kings could have been developed into a na- 
tional sovereignty, and the effort after such a sov- 
ereignty had hardly begun when it was suddenly 
broken by the coming of the Danes. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE COMING OF THE WIRINGS. 

829-858. 

Thefirst In the days of Beorhtric of Wessex, while Offa 
' "'^^' was still ruling in Mercia, and Ecgberht an exile at 
the court of Charles, "in the year 'j'^'j, came three 
ships " to the West-Saxon shores, " and then the 
reeve rode thereto, and would force them to go to 
the king's tun, for that he knew not what they were ; 
and they slew folk." ' Two hundred years later, in 
the midst of the long warfare which opened with the 
landing of the pirate-band, the memory of that first 
warninsf of dano^er was still fresh in the minds of 
men. " Suddenly," ran the later tradition preserved 
in the royal West-Saxon house, " there came a Dan- 
ish fleet, not very alarming, consisting of three long 
' ships, and this was their first coming. When this 

* Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 787, which adds, " These were the first 
ships of Danish men that sought land of Engle-folk." Munch, 
however (Det Norske Folks Historic, German trans, by Claussen, 
pt. iv. p. 186), points out that this entry dates at earliest from 891, 
when the Danes were really the assailants of Britain, and that a 
more contemporary entry may be found in the late Canterbury 
Chronicle (F), where the ships are called " of Northmen from Here- 
tha-land." " It is a strong testimony to the age of this account that 
the Wikings are called Northmen, for this name was lost in England 
earlier than elsewhere." "The so-called Heretha-land," he adds, 
" from which these Northmen came, can be none other than Harde- 
land, or Hardesyssel, in Jutland, for from Hordeland in Norway no 
descents upon England had taken place at this time." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. aq 

came to the ears of the king's reeve, who was then chap. h. 
in the tun which is called Dorchester, he mounted The 
his horse and with a few men hastened to the port, o°f™he^ 
thinking they were merchants rather than enemies, ^^^s^- 
and addressing them with authority ordered them to 829-858. 
be carried to the king's tun ; and by them he and 
those who were with him were there slain. Now 
the name of this reeve was Beaduheard." ' Soon 
there were few tun-reeves who knew not what these 
strangers were, for six years later, in 793, their pirate- 
boats were ravaging the coast of Northumbria, 
plundering the monastery of Lindisfarne and mur- 
dering its monks ; ' and in 794 they entered the 
Wear to pillage and burn the houses of Wearmouth 
and Jarrow. " He who can hear of this calamity," 
wrote Alcuin, as the news reached him in Gaul of 
the ruin of the houses which enshrined within them 
the religious history of Northumbria, the houses of 
Aidan and Cuthberht, of Benedict Biscop and of 
Baeda — " he who can hear of this calamity and not 
cry to God on behalf of his country, has a heart not 
of flesh, but of stone." ' 

The descent of the three strange ships did, in fact, Thecon- 

. quest of 

herald a new conquest of Britain. It was but the England. 
beginning of a strife which was to last unbroken till 
the final triumph of the Norman conqueror. For 
nearly a hundred years to come the shores of Eng- 
land were harried and its folk slain by successors of 
these northern pirates, till their scattered plunder- 

' ^thelweard, a. 787. ^thelweard was a descendant of ^thelred 
I., and probably the ealdorman of the Western Provinces in the 
reign of ^thelred II. ^ Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg, a. 793, 794. 

^ Alcuin Op. (Migne), pt, i. epist. xi, 

4 



50 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. raids were merged in the more organized attack of 

The the Danish sea-kings. The conquests of Ivar and 

?nhf Guthrum and Halfdene in the days of Alfred were, 

wikings. -j^ their turn, but the prelude to the bowing of all 

829-858. Enofland to a foreio:n rule under Swein and Cnut. 

But in the end the fruit of the long attack slipped 

from Danish hands. The harvest, indeed, was reaped, 

but it was reaped by Northmen who had ceased, even 

in tongue, to be Northmen at all. Not the Danes of 

Denmark, but the Danes of Rouen, of Caen, of Bay- 

eux, became lords of the realm of Alfred and Ead- 

gar. It was the sword of the Normans which drove 

for the last time from English shores the fleet of 

the Danes. 

The f j^g new assailants announced themselves as men 

Northern i i t> i • 

peoples, of the north, men from the lands beyond the Baltic ; 
but this told Englishmen nothing. Though the 
Jutes who had shared in the conquest of Britain 
had been at least akin in blood with the dwellers on 
either side the Cattegat, their work had soon come 
to an end, and with it had ended, for centuries, all 
contact of the men of the north with Englishmen. 
It was not till the middle of the eighth century that 
dim news of heathen nations across the Baltic came 
from English missionaries who were toiling among 
the Saxons of the Elbe, and an English poet, it may 
be an English mission-priest in the older home of 
his race, wove fragments of northern sagas into his 
Christianized version of the song of Beowulf. But 
to the bulk of Englishmen, as to the rest of Christen- 
dom, these peoples remained almost unknown. Their 
life had, indeed, till now, been necessarily a home 
life ; for, instead of fighting and mingling with the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^I 

world about them, they had had to battle for sheer char h. 
existence with the stern winter, the barren soil, the t&o 
stormy seas of the north. While Britain was pass- oTtii? 
ing through the ages of her conquest, her settle- "Wikmgs. 
ment, her religious and political reorganization, the 829-858. 
Swede was hewing his way into the dense pine- 
forests that stretched like a sea of woodland be- 
tween the bleak moorlands and wide lakes of his 
father-land,' the Dane was finding a home in the 
reaches of birch-wood and beech-wood that covered 
the flat isles of the Baltic, and the Norwegian was 
winning field and farm from the steep slopes of his 
narrow fiords. 

It was this hard strus^sfle for life that left its stamp ^'^'^"' 

^ ■■■ temper. 

to the last on the temper of the Scandmavian peo- 
ples. The very might of the forces with which they 
battled gave a grandeur to their resistance. It was 
to the sense of human power that woke as the fisher- 
boat rode out the storm, as the hunter ploughed his 
lonely way through the blinding snow-drift, as the 
husbandman waged his dogged warfare with un- 

' Olaf, King Ingiald's son, went westward with his men " to a 
river which comes from the north and falls into the Venner Lake, 
and is called Klar River. There they set themselves down, turned 
to and cleared the woods, burned, and then settled there. . . . Now, 
when it was told of Olaf in Sweden that he was clearing the forests, 
they laughed at his doings, and called him the Tree-feller " (Olaf 
Traetelgia). — Ynglinga Saga, c. 46, in Laing's translation of the 
Heimskringla (Sea Kings of Norway), i. 255. So of an earlier king, 
Onund, " Sweden is a great forest land, and there are such great 
uninhabited forests in it that it is a journey of many days to cross 
them. Onund bestowed great pains and cost in clearing the woods 
and tilling the cleared land. . , . Onund had roads made through 
all Sweden, both over morasses and mountains : and he was there- 
fore called Onund Road-maker" (Braut-Anund). — Ynglinga Saga, 
c. 37, Laing, i, 247, 



r-^ THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. kindly seasons and barren fields, that these men 
The owed their indomitable energy, their daring self-reli- 
ofTh? ance, their readiness to face overwhelming odds, 
wikings. i\-^q[y slowness to believe themselves beaten. He 
829-858. who would win good fame, said an old law, must 
hold his own against two foes and even against 
three ; it is only from four that he may fly without 
shame. Courage, indeed, was a heritage of the 
whole German race, but none felt like the man of the 
north the glamour and enchantment of war. Fight- 
ing- was the romance that alone broke the stern 
monotony of his life ; the excitement and emotion 
which find a hundred spheres among men of our 
day found but this one sphere with him. As his 
boat swept out between the dark headlands at the 
fiord's mouth, the muscles that had been hardened 
by long strife with thankless toil quivered with the 
joy of the coming onset. A passion of delight rings 
through war-saga and song; there are times when 
the northern poetry is drunk with blood, when it 
reels with excitement at the crash of sword -edge 
through helmet and bone, at the warrior's war-shout, 
at the gathering heaps of dead. The fever of fight 
drove all ruth and pity before it. Within the cir- 
cle of his own home, indeed, the sternness of the 
life he lived did gentle work in the Wiking's heart' 
Long winter and early nightfall gathered the house- 

^ For their love of home, see a touching scene in the Njal's Saga 
(trans, by Dasent, i. 236). Gunnar, doomed by the Thing to exile, 
goes down to the ship, then " he turned with his face up towards 
the Lithe and the homestead at Lithend, and said, " Fair is the 
Lithe, so fair that it has never seemed to me so fair ; the corn-fields 
are white to harvest, and the home-mead is mown ; and now I will 
ride back home, and not fare over sea at all." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^^ 

hold closely together round the common hearth, and char n. 
nowhere did stronger ties bind husband to wife or me 
child to father; nowhere was there a deeper rever- oTth? 
ence for womanhood and the sanctities of woman- wikmgs. 
hood. But when fight had once begun, the farmer 829-858. 
and fisher who loved his own wife and child with so 
tender a love became a warrior who hewed down the 
priest at his altar, drove mothers to slavery, tossed 
babes in grim sport from pike to pike.' The na- 
tions on whom these men were soon to swoop 
cowered panic-stricken before a pitilessness that 
seemed to them the work of madmen. " Deliver 
us," ran the prayer of a litany of the time, " deliver 
us, O Lord, from the frenzy of the Northmen !" 

What 2:ave their warfare its special character was ,, ^{'^ 
that its field was the sea. The very nature, indeed, ami the 
of their home-land drove these men to the sea, for 
in all the northern lands society was as yet but a 
thin fringe of life edging closely the sea-brim. In 
Sweden or the Danish isles rough forest-edge or 
dark moor -slope pressed the village fields closely 
to the water's edge. In Norwary the bulk of the 
country was a vast and desolate upland of barren 
moor, broken only by narrow dales that widened 
as they neared the coasts into inlets of sea; and it 
was in these inlets or fiords, in the dale at the 
fiord's head, or by the fiord's side, where the cliff- 

' " Domos vestras combusserunt, res vestras asportarunt, pueros 
sursum jactatos lancearum acumine susceperunt, conjuges vestras 
quasdam vi oppresserunt, quasdam secum abduxerunt." — Hen. 
Hunt. lib. V. procem. (ed. Arnold, p. 138). A Wiking named Oelver, 
in the ninth century, is said to have been nicknamed " Barnakarl" 
(or child's cnecht), because he would not join in the tossing children 
on pikes. — Munch, Det Norske Folks Hist. (Germ. trans.), pt. iv. p. 232. 



sea. 



^4 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. wall now softened into slopes to which his cattle 
The clung, now drew back to make room for thin slips 
^oTthf of meadow-land and corn-land, that the Norwegian 
wikings. found his home. Inland, where the bare mountain 
829-858. flats then rose like islands out of a sea of wood, the 
country was strange and dread to them ; for the 
boldest shrank from the dark holts and pools that 
broke the desolate moorland, from the huge stones 
that turned into giants in the mists of nightfall — 
giants that stalked over the fell till the gray dawn 
smote them into stone again — from the wolves that 
stole along the fearsome fen-paths, and from the fell 
shapes into which their excited fancy framed the 
mists at eventide — shapes of giant " moor-steppers," 
of elves and trolls, of Odin with his wind-cloak 
wrapped round him as he hurried over the waste. 
But terror and strangeness vanished with a sight of 
the sea. To the man of the north the sea was road 
and huntinqr-Q-round. It was a " water-street " be- 
tween the scattered settlements ; for few cared to 
push overland across the dark belts of moor that 
parted one fiord from another. Even more than the 
land about his home it was the dalesmen's harvest- 
field; for fisher's net had often to make up for scanty 
corn-growth and rotting crops, and quest of whale 
and seal carried them far along their stormy coasts." 
Their The life of these northern folk was, in its main 
usages. £g^^^^j^.gg^ Qj^g ^\\\\ the life of the earlier Englishmen." 
Their home and home customs were the same. 

^ See Othere's story ixv Alfreds Orosius, at the close of Pauli's 
Life of Alfred, p. 249. 

' See Munch, Det Norske Folks Historic (Germ, trans, by Claus- 
sen), pt. ii. pp. 140-257, for the details of their life. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. cc 

The ranks of society differed only in name. Our chap, h. 
aetheling, ceorl, and slave are found in the oldest The 
tradition of the north as jarl, carl, and thrall;' in onii? 
later times carl begat the bonder and jarl the 'Wikmgs. 
king. There was as little difference in their politi- 829-858. 
cal or judicial institutions. The bonders gathered 
to the thing as the ceorls to the moot; we see the 
little "folks," who in our own history so soon fuse 
into larger peoples in the " fylki," each with its jarl 
or kine, eisht of which found room for themselves 
in the district of Trondhjem alone." In religion, too, 
there was the same kinship. The gods that were 
common to the Teutonic race were worshipped in 
the northern lands as elsewhere, though nowhere 
among the German peoples did their story become 
clothed with so noble a poetry. The contrast of 
the warmth and peace within the home of the Scan- 
dinavian with the sternness and uproar of the win- 
ter world without it, woke a wild fancy in the groups 
that clustered through the long eventide round the 
glowing w^ood-ashes of the hearth. Thor's mighty 
hammer was heard smiting in the thunder peal that 
rolled away over the trackless moors. Odin's 
mighty war-cry was heard in the wind-blast that 
rushed howlino; out to sea. The faint and brief 
daylight of mid-winter pointed forward to that " twi- 
light of the gods," when even they should yield to 
the weird that awaited them, and the All-father him- 
self should die. 

'See the curious " Rigsmaal " in Edda Samundar, iii. 170-190. 
Copenhagen, 1828. 

^ Saga of Harald Fairhair ; Laing's Sea Kings of Norway (trans- 
lation of the Heimskringla), i. 275. For the Fylki, see Munch, Det 
Norske Folks Hist. (German trans,), pt. i. p. 126, etc. 



^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.ii. There was the same likeness in their usas^es of 

The war. In both peoples the war-band lay at the root 

of the of all. The young warriors of the folk gathered 

wikmgs. j-Qyj^(^ 2i war-leader for fight and foray ; sometimes 

829-858. ^\^Q 1^'iYigr of this dale or that summoned his figrhtins:- 

T/ieir men for more serious warfare; sometimes a farmer 

warfare. , , . i i • i i r 

when seed-time was over mustered his bondmen tor 
a harvest of pillage ere the time came for harvest- 
ing his fields. To reap the one harvest was counted 
through the north as honest and man-worthy a deed 
as to reap the other.' But while the English war- 
band made its foray over land, the northern war- 
band made its foray over sea. From the " wik," or 
creek where their long-ship lurked, the " Wikings," 
or "creek-men,"' as the adventurers were called, 
pounced upon their prey, or crept along the iron- 
bound coast, striking here and there up the fiords 
to harry and to slay. The " long-ship " itself in its 
very construction was above all a pirate ship ; of 
great length, but narrow beam and little depth of 
keel,' its admirable lines and all but flat bottom 
showed that it was built exclusively for speed. In 
rough water, indeed, the Wiking ships were almost 
unmanageable, and a storm like that off the coast of 
Lindisfarne in 794 threw them helpless on the beach. 
Nor were they adapted for long sea-journeys ; there 

^ See the story of Swein, Asleifs son, in the Orkneyinga Saga 
(trans, by Anderson), c. 72, etc., pp. wj et seq, 

^ For derivation and history of this word, see Munch, Det Norske 
Folks Hist. (German trans.), pt. iv. p. 237. It is used solely by voy- 
agers to the western, never by those to the eastern, seas. 

^ The boat found recently under a mound at Gokstad, in Norway, 
is about seventy-eight feet long by sixteen and a half feet broad, 
and between five and six feet deep. She would draw about four 
feet of water, and was driven by sixteen oars on either side. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^7 

was little accommodation for crew or cargo ; and the chai\ n. 
pirates were forced to moor at each sunset, to make The 
a foray for what cattle might serve for their meal, oTth? 
and to sleep beneath a sail on the beach. In fight- "w^^^^- 
ing, too, their slightness of construction, fastened to- 829-858. 
gether as their timbers often were by wattles of 
tree-roots for lack of iron, forbade any use of them 
in shock of ship against ship ; ' they were, in fact, 
lashed together, and their stern and forecastle used 
as platforms for their fighting crews. But they 
were well fitted for their special end. A heavy 
merchant vessel lay at the mercy of the Wiking's 
" keel," as it darted out from covert of headland or 
isle, while its flat bottom and shallow draught of 
water made every river-mouth a haven, and every 
river a road into the land that the pirates lusted to 
pillage. 

At the causes that drew these men, with the close <^'"f^:f ^/ 

their 

of the eighth century," to their attack on western movement 
Christendom we can do little more than guess, for soiuh. 
history of the north, as yet, there is none.' It may 
be, as after-legend told, that the growth of popula- 

^ The ships of the Wikings were not designed for sea-fights ; 
their main object was to serve merely as a means of transport from 
one field of plunder to another. See K. Maurer's review of Steen- 
strup's Indledning i Normannertiden (Normannerne, Bind i.) in 
the Jenaer Literatur-zeitung, 4th series, No. 2, Jan. 13, 1877, p. 25.— 
(A. S. G.) 

^ The Scandinavian legends carry the conquests of the Northmen 
back to a far earlier time. But the joint evidence of the English, 
Irish, and Prankish chroniclers is conclusive in establishing the real 
date of their first attacks. 

' Munch, in the opening of his great work, Det Norske Folks 
Historic, has striven to penetrate the darkness by the help of philol- 
ogy, the older genealogies, etc. ; but his success is far from being 
commensurate with his industry. 



58 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR ir. tion had outstripped the resources of the fiords, and 
The the little commonwealths were forced by very hun- 
oTth? ger to drive out their younger folk/ It may be that 
wikings. ^i^g work of union which was at last to knit these 
829-858. commonwealths together into peoples and nations, 
as well as the revolt against it, had already begun. 
The men of the north shared with the rest of the 
Teutonic family its love of freedom and self-govern- 
ment ; but the severance of settlement from settle- 
ment by long reaches of desolate moorland gave this 
spirit of independence a harder and fiercer tone than 
elsewhere. It became a wild and passionate hatred 
of the subordination and obedience which wider 
union and a common government necessarily bring 
with them. No seas were too strange to traverse, no 
land too far to fly to, when the Northman was called 
to bow to the rule of a common king. But the full 
effect of this temper was not to be felt for a hundred 
years; and in seeking for the causes of their action 
at this earlier time it is, perhaps, needless to look 

^ Laing (Sea Kings of Norway, i. 109) shows the impossibihty of 
widening the Httle farms along the fiords, and the consequent neces- 
sity for constant emigration. It is still seen in the large number of 
Scandinavian emigrants to America. See Munch, Det Norske 
Folks Hist. (German trans.), pt. i. p. 173, and Dudo, "Exuberantes 
atque terram, quam incolunt, habitare non sufficientes, coUecta sorte 
multitudine pubescentium, veterrimo ritu in externa regna extru- 
duntur nationum, ut adquirant sibi prseliando regna, quibus vivere 
possint pace perpetua" (Duchesne, Histor. Norm. p. 62). Olaf 
Trygvasson's Saga mentions a tradition that in case of famine all 
who could not feed themselves, old and sick, were slain. [Steen- 
strup accepts the theory of over-population (which he attributes to 
the practice of polygamy) as the cause of emigration. K. Maurer, 
on the other hand, argues from the account given in Landnamabok 
of Harald Fairhair's attempts to check emigration that the country 
cannot have been over-peopled. See Maurer's review of Steenstrup 
in Jenaer Literatur-zeitung, Jan. 13, 1877, p. 25. — (A. S. G.)] 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



SSi^l 



further than to the hope of plunder. What a spell chap. ir. 
the sudden disclosure of a world's wealth casts on The 
whole peoples we know from the memories of the o°f™iie° 
Spain of Charles the Fifth and the England of '^^^S's- 
Elizabeth. But the expeditions of Cortes or Ra- 829-858. 
leigh were only the last outbreaks of a passion 
which had lingered on from the very outset of hu- 
man history. As soon as men gathered in village 
and seaport the boats of Greek pirates swarmed 
over the Hellenic seas. Rome, in the very height 
of her power, had to battle with pirate fleets which 
grew with the growing commerce of the Mediterra- 
nean. It was the wealth of the empire, the dream 
of sacking her towns and pillaging her treasures, 
which drew on her the German peoples in her de- 
cay. And now that the world which had reeled 
under that mighty shock was again organizing itself 
round powers which recalled the greatness as well 
as the name of Rome — now that commerce was 
covering the sea afresh with its merchant boats, and 
new towns rising within deserted walls, and wealth 
gathering once more under the shelter of church 
and abbey, the thirst for plunder woke again in the 
north. The boats which had sailed from its fiords 
to pillage the dales of their neighbors steered south- 
wards for a richer spoil. 

From the opening of the ninth century we see ^'^^^ 
them pushing boldly to the south along two distinct aiidtke 
lines of advance on either side of Britain — alonsf the 
coast of Ireland, and along the coast of Gaul. The 
starting-point of the last advance was a region 
familiar to us as the original Engle-land,' but which 

^Wulfstan told Alfred of his sail past "Jutland, Zeeland, and 



6o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. was now known as South Jutland, and whose 
The earher peoples had been replaced by dwellers of 
oTth? Scandinavian blood. The political geography of the 
wikings. j^Qi-t;h was far from having taken, as yet, its after- 
829-858- shape. The kingdom of Swithiod, indeed, in the 
lands about Upsala already gave promise of the fu- 
ture Sweden, but only a germ of the later Norway 
could be seen in the little kingdom of Westfold round 
the Christiania fiord. Small, however, as this was, it 
had shown itself vigorous enough to set up a line 
of dependent kings in South Jutland ;' and it was 
the raids of these kings along the Prankish shores 
that, in the year 800, when his power had reached 
its highest point, drew Charles the Great to the 
northern borders of his realm. The garrisons he 
stationed along the coast, as well as a fleet which 
he ordered to be built in its harbors, showed how 
keen was his sense of the danger that threatened 
the western world. His precautions, indeed, were 
not an hour too soon. In 803, during his last strug- 
gle with the Saxons, Gudrod or Godfrid, king both 
of Westfold and South Jutland, advanced with a 
fleet as far as Sleswick, and gave shelter to the war- 
riors who fled from the sword of the Franks. Five 
years later a raid of the same king across the Elbe 
asfain called the Frankish arms to the north, and 
Godfrid drew across the peninsula the defensive 
line of earthworks called the Dane work to arrest 
them. 

many islands." " In these lands," comments the king, " the Engle 
dwelt before they came hither to this land." — -Alfred's Orosius, in 
Pauli's Life of Alfred, p. 253. 

^ For these kings in Westfold and South Jutland, see Munch, Det 
Norske Folks Hist. (German trans.), pt. iv. pp. 134-154. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 6i 

So formidable, indeed, was this freebooter's pres- chap. h. 
ence that Charles was already preparing an expe- The 
dition against Jutland when Godfrid himself chal- oTthe^ 
lenged the encounter, in 8io, by a descent on Frisia "^^^s^- 
with two hundred ships ; and, making himself master 829-858. 
of the country after three combats with its people. Their 

Cl€SCS1tiS Oil 

boasted that he would soon go and enthrone himself Frisia. 
in the emperor's own Aachen. The danger, indeed, 
passed away as suddenly as it had risen, for the 
northern king was slain by one of his followers, his 
kingdom was broken up, and a nephew, Heming, 
who succeeded him in the Jutish part of it, made 
peace with the Franks. But even this peace, and a 
civil war among the Northmen, which followed it, 
did not quiet the emperor's anxiety ; for on the eve 
of his death, in the autumn of 8i i, we find him visit- 
ing Boulogne to see the ships whose building he 
had ordered the year before, and, after restoring the 
old Roman light-house which served to guide ships 
along the coast, he made his w^ay thence to the banks 
of the Scheldt, where vessels were also in process of 
construction. During the early part of the reign of 
his son, the Emperor Lewis, a continuance of the 
civil war among the Northmen served even more 
than these fleets to secure the Frankish coast; and 
the aid of the emperor enabled Harold or Heriold, 
one of the claimants of the throne, again to detach . 
Jutland from Westfold. But Harold's conversion to 
Christianity was at once followed by his expulsion 
from the land ; and from this moment the old attacks 
were resumed as fiercely as ever, till the strife be- 
tween Lewis and his sons broke down the barriers 
between the Northmen and their prey, and the pirate- 



62 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.ir. boats ravaged without hindrance from the mouth of 

• The the Elbe to the mouth of the Rhine. 

ofTh? It was a party of these marauders along the 

wikings. pi-ankish coast who at last pushed across the Chan- 

829-858. nel to the mouth of the Thames and ravaged, in 834, 
The the Isle of Sheppey.' But whatever influence the 
'and^ advance of the Wikings along the coast of Gaul may 

Ireland, j^^^^ j^^^ ^^ ^^^ southcm or castcm states of Brit- 
ain, the attention of Ecgberht himself must have been 
fixed even more intently on their parallel line of ad- 
vance to the west." Ireland was as yet a more tempt- 
ing prey for the pirates than even Gaul/ It was at 
the monasteries that these earlier raids were mainly 
aimed ; and nowhere were the monastic houses so 
many and so rich. It was in these retreats, indeed, 
sheltered as men deemed by their holiness from the 
greed of the spoiler, that the whole wealth of the 
country w^as stored; and the goldwork and jewelry 
of their shrines, their precious chalices, the silver- 
bound horn which king or noble dedicated at their 
altars, the curiously wrought covering of their mass- 
books, the hoard of their treasure-chests, fired the 
imagination of the northern marauders as the treas- 
ures of the Incas fired that of the soldiers of Spain. 
News spread fast up dale and fiord how wealth such 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 832 (4). 

^ Additional proof that the earlier attacks on Southern Britain 
came from Ireland is given by a hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins, many 
of them Kentish, found at Delgany in Wicklow, to which attention 
has been drawn by Mr. John Evans. The latest in date are those 
of Beornwulf, from 820 to 824, while neither in Sweden nor Den- 
mark have such coins been found of earlier date than 83c. 

^ For the Northmen in Ireland, see especially The War of the 
Gaedhill with the Gaill, ed. by Dr. Todd, 1867, and its learned In- 
troduction. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 5^ 

as men never dreamed of was heaped up in houses chap, n, 
guarded only by priests and shavelings, who dared The 
not draw sword. The Wikings had long been draw- o°nhe^ 
ing closer to this tempting prey. From the coast of ^^^s^ 
Norway' a sail of twenty-four hours with a fair wind ^29-858. 
brings the sailor in sight of the Shetlands ; " Shet- 
lands and Orkneys furnished a base for the advance 
of the pirates along the western shores of Britain, 
where they found a land like their own in the dales 
and lochs of Ross and Argyll, and where the names 
of Caithness and Sutherland tell of their conquest 
and settlement on the mainland ; while the physical 
appearance of the people still records their coloniza- 
tion of the Hebrides." Names such as that of the 
Orm's Head mark their entrance at last into the 
Irish Channel;* and here they had for more than 
thirty years been ravaging along either coast, but 
seeking out and plundering above all the religious 
houses with which Ireland was studded. 

In 832, however, but four years after the submis- ^^f^ 
sion of all England to Ecgberht, these raids gave a;td//ie 
way to an organized invasion ; for the host of a lead- 

' The earlier assailants of Ireland are called " White Lochlann," 
who are supposed to be Norwegians ; the later " Danar," or Danes. 
But "we cannot be sure that the word 'Dane' is not sometimes 
given to the Norwegians." — Todd, War of Gaedhill and Gaill, Introd. 
p. xxxi. Geographical considerations, however, seem decisive as to 
the starting-point of the attack on the Isles and Ireland. 

^ Munch, Det Norske Folks Hist. (German trans.), pt. iv. p. 212. 

^ Worsaae, The Danes and Northmen, sec. ix. 

* The Annals of Ulster note their first appearance in 794 (really 
795) : "The burning of Rechru by the Gentiles, and its shrines were 
broken and plundered." Rechru is probably Lambay Island. From 
a passage in Caradoc of Lancarvan, this would seem to have been 
after their defeat in a descent on Glamorgan. — Todd, War of Gaed- 
hill and Gaill, Introd. pp. xxxii., xxxiii. 



tnos. 
'.the 
Welsh. 



64 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARir. er named Turgesius' or Thorgils, establishing itself 
The at Armagh, levied tribute from all the north of Ire- 
ofTh? land. What must have given its main import to 
wikings. ^]^^g settlement in Ecgberht's eyes was the fact that 
829-858. it brought with it a revival of the struggle with the 
Welsh. His conquest of Cornwall had seemed the 
last blow in a strife of more than four hundred 
years ; but the blow was hardly struck when the ac- 
tion of the Northmen in the Irish seas roused the 
West Welsh to fresh hopes of freedom. The scanty 
traces of their presence show that the pirates at- 
tempted little in the way of settlement on the east- 
ern shores of the Irish Channel ; there was little, in- 
deed, to tempt them in the wild Bret-land. But be- 
hind it lay the richer land of the Engle ; and soon 
it was not as foes but as friends that they were 
offering themselves to the Welsh for a raid on their 
common enemy. Such an offer could not fail to 
find a response ; and thus, after encountering with 
varied fortunes the first stray descents upon his 
coasts, the West-Saxon king found himself face to 
face with a rising of the newly won land across the 
Tamar," backed by armed aid from the Northmen. 
All Cornwall must have risen ; for it was at a spot 
but a few miles from its border that Ecgberht met 
the forces of the league, on a lift of dreary granitic 
upland just westward of its boundary, the Tamar, 
the heights that bear the name of Hengest-dun. 

* Snorro's Saga of Harald Fairhair (Laing's Heimskringla, i. 304) 
makes this Thorgils a son of Harald, sent by him to Ireland. But 
Harald did not begin his reign till thirty years later, and was then 
but a boy of ten years old. 

" Cornwall had been conquered by Ecgberht in 823. See Making 
of England, p. 432. — (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^c 

But victory was still true to the king, Cornwall chap, n. 
was again recovered, and the fioht won rest for his The 
own West-Saxon land from the northern marauders o°fThe^ 
through the last two years of Ecgberht's reign/ wikings. 

But if the pirate descents failed to loose Ecg- 829-858. 
berht's hold upon the west, they had a far more mo- Political 
mentous result in arresting, at its very outset, his ^'Sono/' 
work of consolidating the English peoples themselves. ^^^•^•^^^• 
This work, it must be remembered, had hardly begun. 
That the vague supremacy which Ecgberht claimed 
might have been developed into a real national sov- 
ereignty by after-efforts of the West-Saxon kings is, 
indeed, likely enough, if we compare the real strength 
of Wessex with that of its rival states ; but with the 
coming of the Danes all effort after such a sover- 
eignty was suddenly brought to an end, and the en- 
ergy of Wessex had from that moment to be con- 
centrated on the task of self-defence. We have seen 
the strength which Ecgberht's kingdom drew from 
the physical characteristics and varied composition 
of the older and the newer Wessex that lay on either 
side of Selwood. But the power of the West-Saxon 
ruler stretched beyond the bounds of Wessex, where, 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 835 (7). In our own English chronicles " Dena," 
or Dane, is used as the common term for all the Scandinavian invad- 
ers of Britain, though not including the Swedes, who took no part 
in the attack, while Northman generally means " man of Norway." 
Asser, however, uses the words as synonymous, " Nordmanni sive 
Dani." Across the channel " Northman " was the general name for 
the pirates, and " Dane" would usually mean a pirate from Denmark. 
The distinction, however, is partly a chronological one ; as owing 
to the late appearance of the Danes in the middle of the ninth cen- 
tury, and the prominent part they then took in the general Wiking 
movement, their name tended from that time to narrow the area of 
the earlier term of " Nordmanni." See Munch, Det Norske Folks 
Hist. (German trans.), pt. iv. pp. 135-137. 

5 



65 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. eastward of the Andredsweald, the so-called " Eastern 
The Kingdom " grouped itself round the centre of Kent. 
^oTth? Subject as it was to Ecgberht, Kent still retained 
wikings. something of its older greatness; and the existence 
829-858. of the Primate alone would have hindered it from 
sinking into a mere dependency of Wessex. Nor 
did it look upon itself as a conquered country or as 
linked to Wessex simply by the sword; for Ecg- 
berht claimed to be nearest in blood to the house of 
Hengest, and to be thus as fully hereditary king of 
Kent as he was of Wessex. The two kingdoms, 
therefore, were united, not by a subordination of one 
to the other, but by their obedience to a common 
king. Such a relation made it possible to solve the 
problem of the government of Kent by setting over 
it, as under-king, the elder among the sons of the 
King of Wessex, and by grouping about it Essex, 
Surrey, and Sussex, to form a realm w^hich bore the 
name of the Eastern Kingdom.* 
li^ Differences so marked as those which existed be- 

organim- twccn thc thrcc divisions of Wessex might well have 
imperilled its political unity ; what they actually did 
was to triple its military strength. We shall see the 
Danes conquering Northumbria or Mercia in a sin- 
gle campaign. But to conquer Wessex required a 
threefold effort. When the pirates, after years of 
ravage, had practically torn from it the Eastern King- 
dom, Wessex itself faced the invaders behind the 
Andredsweald ; and even when the older realm had 

' Charter of Ecgberht, 823 ; " filii nostri .^thelwulfi, qxiem regem 
constituimus in Cantia" (Thorpe, Diplomatarium, p. 66). ^thel- 
wulf s own charter to Chertsey (ibid. p. 78) shows that Kent here 
means the whole Eastern Kingdom. 



ttOtl. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 57 

at last been overrun, a West-Saxon king could still chap. n. 
fall back on the Wessex beyond Selwood. And to The 
this natural strength was added the strength of a oniS^ 
distinct military organization. The fyrd of each ^^^s^- 
folk-district was placed in the hands of an ealdorman 829-858. 
appointed by the king; nor was this arrangement 
confined to Wessex itself, for in each part of the 
" Eastern Kingdom," also, we find an ealdorman act- 
ing side by side with the under-king.' The military 
value of this organization was soon seen in the free- 
dom and elasticity which it gave to the later resist- 
ance against the Danes. 

But Ecgberht was far from relying only on his ^'^•^'^^^'^ ^/ 
warlike resources. In his attitude towards the Church c/iun^. 
he followed, no doubt, the example of the Prankish 
kings. From the earlier Pippin to Charles the Great 
the rulers of the Pranks had striven to raise the so- 
cial and political importance of the clergy. Within 
their older dominions they looked upon prelate and 
priest as the main elements of social order and in- 
tellectual progress ; in their newer conquests they 
planted religious foundations as centres of a new 
civilization. Motives of hardly less weight would, in 
any case, have forced the same policy on Ecgberht. 
In the realms which his sword had begun to build 
up into a new England the Church was the one 
power which he found unbroken. The anarchy of 
each kingdom within itself, the strife of one kingdom 
with another, had only served to give the priesthood 
a new political weight. In countries where the Ger- 
man invaders found Christianity already established, - 
and bowed to its supremacy, the bishop, enthroned 

' Eng, Chron. (Winch.), a. 853. 



58 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. in his Roman town and representing the Roman pop- 

The ulation in its attitude towards the conqueror, had 

ofThe^ from the first taken a separate poHtical position, 

wikings. ^i^ici^ strengthened into temporal princedom as time 

829-858. went on. But great as such a position seemed, it 
in fapt brought him to the level of the secular nobles 
about him. Like them he became necessarily em- 
broiled in civil strife ; like them he was the sport of 
ill fortune as of good ; and ill fortune meant, in his 
case as in theirs, exile or deposition or death. But 
an English bishop was from the first one in blood 
and interest with the whole of his Enghsh flock. 
His diocese was the kingdom. His bishop's seat 
was the king's town. He sat beside king or eald- 
orman in folk-moot or Witenagemot. His position 
was as national as theirs, but it had in it an element 
of permanence which their position lacked. At the 
close of the eighth century, while kings were being 
set aside and ealdormen slain, the bishop, drawn by 
no personal interest into the strife of warring fac- 
tions, rested unharmed in his bishop's chair. In 
realms like Kent, where the civil organization broke 
utterly down, its ruin only added fresh greatness to 
the spiritual organization beside it. The weakness 
of the later kings of Hengest's race, their wreck in 
' the struggle of Wessex and Mercia for the Kentish 

kingdom, raised the Archbishops of Canterbury 
into a power with which rulers like Offa and Cen- 
wulf were forced to reckon. 

EcgherMs fi-jg policy of the Mercian kin^s had been one of 

Ecclcsicisti' 

cai policy, jealousy of this new power and influence of the 
Church. Ecgberht, on the other hand, like the 
Frank sovereigns in whose court he learned the art 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 5g 

of rule, seized on the priesthood as allies and co- chap. ir. 
operators in the work he had to do. His earlier Tiie 
work of national consolidation, indeed, was a work onh? 
which the Church had been doing ever since the ^^^s^- 
days of Theodore. Its synods were the first national 829-858. 
gatherings, its canons the first national laws, its 
bishops, chosen, as they often were, with little regard 
to their local origin, were the first national officers. 
The national character of the Church rose into yet 
greater prominence as the hopes of political union 
died away; and from the defeat of /^thelbald to 
Ecgberht's day the ecclesiastical body remained the 
one power that struggled against the separatist ten- 
dencies of the English states and preserved some 
faint shadow of national union. That Ecgberht 
should seek its aid in his work of consolidation and 
order would in any case, therefore, have been natural 
enough.' But the inroads of the Wikings supplied 
a yet stronger ground of union between the Church 
and the new kingdom. Each suddenly found itself 
confronted by a common enemy. The foe that 
threatened ruin to the political organization of Eng- 
land threatened ruin to its religious organization 
as well. In the attack of the northern peoples, 
heathendom seemed to fling itself in a last desperate 
rally on the Christian world. Thor and Odin were 
arrayed against Christ. Abbey and minster were 
the special objects of the pirates' plunder. Priests 
were slain at the altar, and nuns driven, scared, from 
their quiet cells. Library and scriptorium, costly 
manuscript and delicate carving, blazed in the same 

^ For Ecgberht's attitude to the Church, see Stubbs, Constit. Hist, 
i. 269. 



yo THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. pitiless fire. It was not the mere kingdom of Ecg- 

The berht, it was religion and learning and art whose 

onii? very existence Vv^as at stake. It was a common 

wii^gs. (danger, therefore, that drew Church and State to- 

829-858. gether into a union closer than had been seen be- 
fore. In 838 Ecgberht promised lasting peace and 
protection to the see of Canterbury, and received 
from Archbishop Ceolnoth a pledge of firm and un- 
shaken friendship from henceforth forever.' Like 
pledges were given and taken from Winchester, and, 
as we may believe, from the rest of the English 
churches. 

^thei- This alliance was the last political act of Ecg- 
berht's reign, but its results were felt as soon as 
his son ^thelwulf mounted the throne in the year 
which followed it, 839 ; and the energetic attitude of 
such a bishop as Ealhstan of Sherborne, the polit- 
ical influence of Bishop Swithun of Winchester, 
mark the new part which the Church was hence- 
forth to play in English affairs. As bishop of the 
royal city of Winchester, Swithun was naturally 
drawn close to the throne, and throughout ^thel- 
wulf's days he seems to have acted as the king's 
counsellor.' But ^^thelwulf was far from being the 
mere tool of his minister. To the charges made in 
later times against the son of Ecgberht the actual 
history of his reign gives little countenance. He 
is reproached with weakness and inactivity, with an 
unwarlike temper, and with an excessive devotion to 
the Church. But it is hard to see any want of 
energy in the king's actual conduct. His steady 

^ Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, iii. 617. 
« Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 151. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. yj 

fight with the Danes, as well as the crowning vie- chap. it. 
tory which foiled their heaviest attack at Aclea, The 
show his worth as a warrior; while the firmness onh? 
with which he carried out Ecgberht's policy at "^^^s^. 
home, and his effort to organize a common Euro- 829-858. 
pean resistance to the northern marauders, show his 
capacity as a statesman. 

y^thelwulf had hardly mounted the throne when „T!\^ 

. Wtktngs 

he had to meet the foe whom his father's sword had attack 
driven for a brief space from the land, for not even 
such a victory as Hengest-dun could long check the 
attack of the pirates who were cruising in ever-grow- 
ing numbers over the Irish Sea. Their successes, as 
we have seen, had now given them a base of opera- 
tions in Ireland itself, the north of which seemed 
passing into the hands of the Wikings.' Undis- 
puted master of Ulster, Thorgils dealt a heavy 
blow at the religion and civilization of the island 
by the destruction of Armagh, and pressed hard 
upon Meath and Connaught. Meanwhile, scattered 
squadrons were seizing point after point along the 
shore, raising forts and planting colonies to which 
Ireland owed the rise of its earliest towns, for Dub- 
lin, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork all sprang from 
pirate settlements." It was thus from a land that 
seemed all but their own that the Ostmen, as the 
Wikings were called in these parts, could direct 
their attacks against the unharried country across 
St. George's Channel. But they found a vigorous 

' For the character of Thorgil's settlement, see Todd, War of Gaed- 
hill and Gaill, Introd. p. xlviii. 

^ " It was in 837 or 838 that Dublin was first taken by the foreign- 
ers, who erected a fortress there in 841 or 842." — Todd, War of Gaed- 
hill and Gaill, Introd. p. liii. 



^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ii. and well-organized resistance. In S^,'] an attack on 

The the very heart of the realm was repulsed by the 

o?th? fyrd of Hamton-shire under Ealdorman Wulfheard/ 

wikmgs. 'pj^g bulk of the pirate raids, however, were as yet 

829-858. directed against the country to the west beyond 
Selwood, the district which, from its half Celtic pop- 
ulation, was known as that of the Wealh-cyn, and 
where, in spite of the failure of the Cornwealas in 
their revolt against Ecgberht, they might still hope 
for aid from the western Welsh. Here, however, 
the local fyrds fought as resolutely as in Hamton- 

^ ^'7 shire. In the very year of Wulfheard's success 
Ealdorman ^Ethelhelm, at the head of the Dorset- 
folk, fell beaten after a well-fought struggle with a 
pirate force which landed at Portland,' and three 
years later King ^thelwulf was himself defeated in 
an encounter with thirty-five pirate ships at their old 
landing-place of Charmouth ; ' but in 845 the fyrds 
of Somerset and Dorset, with their ealdormen and 
their bishop, Ealhstan, at their head, repulsed the in- 
vaders with heavy loss at the mouth of the Parret, 
.5' and six years later they were driven back with 

slaughter by the fyrd and ealdorman of Devon.* 
„/?.^ The stout fiorhtins: of the men of Wessex was, no 

in Frank- doubt, aided by a sudden weakening in the position 
of their assailants; for in the year of Bishop Ealh- 
stan's victory at the Parret, Thorgils was slain in a 
rising of the Irish tribes of the north,' and his host 
driven from the land, while the Ostmen of the coast 
wasted their strength in bitter warfare between the 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 837. « Ibid. 

3 Ibid. 840. *Ibid. 845, 851. 

* See, for date, Todd, War of Gaedhill and Gaill, Introd. p. xliii. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 7^ 

older settlers and fresh-comers from the northern chap. n. 
lands/ But whether from her own resistance or the The 
weakness of the foes, Wessex at last gained a breath- ont? 
ing-space in the struggle; and for twenty years to "Wi^ss- 
come only a single descent on her coast disturbed 829-858. 
the peace which she had won. The cessation of the 
strife in one quarter, however, was but the signal 
for its outbreak in another. The Wikings, as we 
have seen, had pushed forward from their home in 
two parallel lines of advance — one, mainly from Nor- 
way, by the Shetlands and the Hebrides along the 
coast of Ireland; the other, mainly from South Jut- 
land, along the coast of Friesland and of Gaul. The 
last had, till now, found a formidable barrier in the 
resistance of the empire. But the wars which broke 
out only a few years after ^thelwulf's accession be- 
tween the sons of Lewis the Pious threw open 
Frankland to the pirates' arms, and after pushing 
up the Seine and the Loire to the sack of Rouen 
and Nantes, they reached the Garonne, in 844, and 
wrecked its country as far as Toulouse. In 845 a 
mighty host crowned the work of havoc by the sack 
of Paris ; and with fresh fire thus added to their 
greed, fleet after fleet poured along the coast of 
Gaul. Their aid roused the Bretons into revolt ; 
while victories over the troops of the Franks gave 
Saintes and Limoges to pillage. The pirate raids 
threatened to take the form of permanent conquests. 
One host settled down in Friesland, another seized 

' According to the Annals of Ulster, the " Dubhgael," Black Gen- 
tiles, or Danes, first came to Ireland in 851, and their coming was at 
once followed by a great battle with the " Fingalla," or Norwegians. 
— Todd, War of Gaedhill and Gaill, Introd. p. Ixxviii. 



74 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. the district between the Scheldt and the Meuse; 
The the fleets which pillaged along the Seine and the 
oTth? Loire began to winter boldly in the islands of the 
wikmgs. ^^Q rivers ; while, in 848, a pirate force mastered the 
829-858. town of Bordcaux and made it a place of arms. 
From this hour the Wikings w^ere masters of west- 
ern Frankland, moving with little resistance from 
river to river, and gathering booty at their will. 
They at- jt may havc been the very success of their work, 

tack Kent. ■' . ■' 

however, on the one side of the Channel that had 
hindered them, as yet, from undertaking any very 
serious work on the other. From the outset of 
^thelwulf 's reign, indeed, their presence had been 
felt on the eastern coast of Britain ; in 838 we hear 
of descents on Lindsey and East Anglia,' and, in 
spite of the silence of our annals, these descents 
were probably often repeated through the years that 
followed. On Kent, naturally, their attacks fell more 
frequently. Nowhere in Britain was there a more 
tempting field for the spoiler. Its early civilization, 
its importance as the road of communication with 
the Continent, made Kent one of the wealthiest and 
most thriving parts of Britain; its bounds were 
steadily enlarging as the Kentishmen cleared their 
way into the skirts of the Weald, and rescued from 
the woodland the fertile tract along the upper Med- 
way; and if the silting up of the Wantsum had 
closed the harbor of Richborough, the growing trade 
with Gaul had but passed to Dover and to Sand- 
wich.' The central borough of Kent, Canterbury, 

1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 838. 

" This must have been very early ; as Dover was already a port in 
Ealdhelm's day, and Sandwich in Wilfrid's. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 75 

was in size and wealth among the greatest of EngHsh char n. 
cities; and it was the seat of a primacy which the The 
suppression of that of Lichfield left without a rival o°nh? 
in southern Britain. What was yet more important ^^^gs. 
in the pirates' eyes was the wealth of its religious 829-88. 
houses. Half Thanet belonged to the abbey at 
Minster, while the estates of the two monasteries 
at Canterbury were scattered over the whole face of 
the shire. 

While y^thelwulf guarded Wessex, it was hereTy^'^^^'^-^^''^ 
that his son ^thelstan met the assailants of his 
kingdom in the east. In 838 the same force which 
ravaged Lindsey and. East Anglia slew Ealdorman 
Herebriht and many with him, in a descent on the 
flats of the Mersc-wara, and harried and slew in 
Kent itself.' In the next year, after a raid on Can- 
terbury, the pirates pushed up the Thames to Lon- 
don and Rochester.^ Then, for a while, the land 
had rest, till in 851 the Under-king and Ealdorman 
of Kent repulsed a raid upon Sandwich, and even 
captured nine of the pirate ships. The squadron, 
however, which they thus beat off was only the ad= 
vance guard of, a host which was now preparing for 
an attack; and in the course of the same year a 
fleet of three hundred and fifty pirate vessels, start- 
ing, as it would seem, from the settlement which had 
been made in the island of Betau, moored at the 
mouth of the Thames,' sacked Canterbury, pillaged 
London in spite of the efforts of the Mercian king, 
Beorhtwulf, who advanced to oppose them, and 
pushed through Surrey into the heart of Britain. 
Here, however, ^thelwulf, summoned at last to his 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 838. '■' Ibid. 839. Ubid. 851. 



76 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. aid by the Kentish king, threw himself across their 
The path, and a long and stubborn fight at Aclea ended 
ofThe^ in the defeat of the marauders. More pirates fell 
wikings. Qj^ ^j^g field, boasted, the conquerors, than had ever 
829-858. fallen on English ground before ; and the complete- 
ness of the repulse was seen in the withdrawal of the 
host to its old field of plunder across the Channel. 
But the Wikings were far from any thought of 
abandoning their prey. Two years later two ealdor- 
men, at the head of the fyrds of Kent and Surrey, 
fell after a well-fought fight with a host in Thanet ; ' 
while in 855 the pirates encamped for the whole 
winter in the Isle of Sheppey. 
^7i/iT What was needed to shake off this persistent 
^'^j;'^^ attack of the Wikinsrs from Gaul was, as yEthel- 
wulf saw, the alliance and co-operation of the Prank- 
ish king who was struggling against them in Gaul 
itself. If the first result of the pirate storm had 
been to further English unity by allying the new 
English State with the English Church, its second 
result was to force the State into closer relations 
with its fellow states of Christendom. At the be- 
ginning of his reign ^^thelwulf had opened commu- 
nications with the Emperor Lewis the Gentle for 
common action in meeting the common danger; 
• but it is in his later years that we see the first dis- 
tinct announcement of an international policy, the 
first English recognition of a common interest 
among the western nations, in the resolve of the 
kinor to cross the seas for counsel and concert with 
Charles the Bald. Work, however, had to be done 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 853. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



n 



before he could quit the realm.' On both sides of chap. n. 
the Channel, as we have seen, the appearance of the The 
foe from the north had given a signal for the upris- o°f™he^ 
ing of the Celt ; and while in Gaul the Bretons had wiMngs. 
shaken off the yoke of Charles the Bald and set up 829-858. 
again a Breton kingdom under Breton kings, in 
Britain the West Welsh had risen against their 
West-Saxon over-lords, and the North Welsh had 
thrown off the Mercian supremacy. So formidable, 
indeed, was the last revolt, that, in 853, two years 
after the battle of Aclea, the Mercian king Burh- 
red, Beorhtwulf's successor, was forced to appeal to 
his West-Saxon over-lord for aid; and it was only 
a march of their joint forces into the heart of 
North Wales, with the conquest of Anglesea, that 
forced the Welsh ruler, Roderic Mawr, again to 
own the English supremacy and to pay tribute to 
Mercia. 

In spite of the winterins^ of a pirate force in Shep- ^'Jiei- _ 
pey, the two triumphs of ^Ethelwulf m Surrey and to ckarUs 
in Wales left Britain sufificiently tranquil in 854 to 
suffer him to leave its shores. His first journey, 
however, recalls to us how much more the danger 
from the marauders seemed to men of that day a 
religious than a political one. He undertook a pil- 
grimage to Rome. We know little of the pilgrim- 
age or of his stay at the imperial city, though it 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 853 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 6. One part 
of ^tlielwulf 's preparation was the grant of a sixth part of the rents 
from his private dominions for ecclesiastical and charitable purposes 
(Asser, ed. Wise, p. 8). By an early fraud, this was represented as 
a grant of a tenth of the whole revenue of the kingdom, and as 
the legal origin of tithes. See Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 480- 
490. 



78 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. II. lasted a whole year, and cannot but have served to 
The draw closer the connection of the English Church 
oniTe^ with the Mother Church from which it sprang, 
wik^gs. pi-Qj^ Rome, however, he passed, at length, to the 
829-858. court of the Franks. Blow after blow had shattered 
the Prankish state since Ecgberht, half a century 
earlier, quitted Charles the Great to seek his throne 
in Wessex. The vast realm had been torn to pieces 
by the dissensions of its rulers, as well as by the 
revival of national spirit among the peoples out of 
whom it had been built up. A ring of enemies had 
gathered round it on every border. Sclaves and 
Magyars pressed on its German frontier. The 
Northmen carried fire and sword over western 
Frankland, the country west of the Meuse and the 
Rhone, a fragment of the old Frank realm which 
had fallen in the strife that followed the death of 
Lewis the Gentle to his youngest son, Charles the 
Bald. The reign of Charles had as yet been one of 
terrible misfortunes ; for, brave and active as he was, 
his vigor spent itself fruitlessly on the crowd of foes 
who surrounded him — on the rising of the Breton, 
the revolt of Gascony, the strife of his own house 
for rule, the never-ceasing forays of the Northmen. 
Beaten and baffled as he seemed, however, Charles 
fought on; and the struggle of the harassed king, 
if it failed to save his own realm, did somewhat to 
save ^thelwulf 's. The visit of iF^thelwulf to the 
Frankish court, where he spent three months in the 
summer of 856, was a recognition of their common 
work; and his marriage with the Frank king's 
young daughter, Judith, with which the visit closed, 
marks probably the conclusion of a formal alliance, 



s re- 
el 
death. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 7^ 

perhaps of a common plan of operations with chap. n. 
Charles the Bald.' The 

But the policy of y^thelvvulf was in advance of onh? 
his age. England had hardly as yet realized the "^^j^?s, 
need of national unity, and outside the king's coun- 829-858. 
cil chamber there can have been few who understood ^thei- 
the need of union between the nations of Christen- "^tu/nJu 
dom. The descents of the Wikings had as yet, with 
a single exception, been but isolated plunder-raids, 
and their very success against the invaders would 
help to blind Englishmen to a sense of their danger. 
The new connection with the Frankish king, on the 
other hand, may have roused suspicions of a plan 
for setting aside the elder sons of ^^thelwulf in 
favor of the issue of his marriage with Judith; and 
if such suspicions were once aroused, they would be 
quickened by the coronation of the queen, a cere 
mony which was as yet against the wont of the 
West Saxons." Whatever was the cause of the ris- 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 855 ; Prudent. Tree. Ann. a. 856 (ap. Pertz. i. 450), 
who dates the betrothal in July, the marriage at Verberie on the 
Oise on Oct. i, says that Hincmar, " imposito capiti ejus diademate 
reginse nomine insignit, quod sibi suaeque genti eatenus fuerat insue- 
tum." The marriage can have only been a formal one, as Judith 
was but twelve years old. The marriage of Judith to ^thelbald, on 
his father's death, had, no doubt, the same purely political meaning. 

''■ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 9; Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 169, 
At some time before ^thelwulf's journey the question of the suc- 
cession had been settled in a somewhat peculiar way. His next 
successor would naturally be his eldest son, the " Eastern King," 
.^thelstan ; but, whether from the failing health which the death of 
.^thelstan soon after may indicate or no, it seems to have been need- 
ful to look further, and to arrange that the crown should pass, at his 
death, to his three brothers successively in the order of their birth, 
setting aside the children of all of them, ^thelstan died before his 
father's return ; and the next son, ^thelbald, may have looked on 
the alleged coronation of his youngest brother Alfred at Rome, or 



8o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. II. ing, on his return at the close of 856 ^thelwulf 
The found Wessex in arms. In a gathering at Sel- 
^of™S? wood ' its thegns had pledged themselves to place 
wikings. ^}^g king's cldcst living son, y^thelbald — v^ho on the 
829-858. death of his brother yEthelstan, a few years back, 
had succeeded him in charge of the Eastern King- 
dom — on the throne of Wessex, and their course v^as 
backed by Bishop Ealhstan of Sherborne. Swith- 
un, on the other hand, remained true to yEthel- 
wulf, and the Kentishmen welcomed him back to 
their shores. But ^^thelwulf had no mind for civil 
strife. He was already drawing fast to the grave ; 
and if we judge his conduct by the past history of 
his reign, rather than by the charges of weakness 
which later tradition brought against him, we may 
see in his summons of a Witenagemot to settle this 
question the reluctance of a noble ruler to purchase 
power for himself by again rending England asun- 
der in the face of the foe. The voice of the Witan 
bade'^thelwulf content himself with the Eastern 
Kingdom ; and, abandoning Wessex to i^thelbald, 
the king dwelt quietly in this under-realm for the 
brief space of life which still was left him." 

on the marriage with Judith, as threatening his right of succession 
under this arrangement. 

* Asser (ed. Wise), p. 8. 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 170 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 9. 



Britain. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MAKING OF THE DANELAW. 

858-878. 

A FEW months after his withdrawal to the Eastern ^ ^{^^ 

final at- 

realm brought ^thelwuli to the grave, at the open- tack on 
ing of 858;' and yEthelbald enjoyed but for two 
years longer the crown which revolt had given him. 
The reign of his brother ^thelberht," who followed 
him in 860, was almost as short and uneventful; 
and for some years there was little to break the 
peace of the land save a raid of the Northmen on 
Winchester,' which was avenged by the men of 
Hamptonshire and Berkshire under their ealdor- 
men,* and a ravaging of the eastern shores of Kent 
by pirates from Gaul in 864. But with the death 
of ^thelberht and the accession of his next sur- 

' " Idibus Januarii," Prud. Tree. Ann. a. 858 (ap. Pertz. i. 451). 

* By ^thelwulf s will, ^thelberht, who succeeded him as under- 
king in Kent, should have remained there at ^thelbald's death, 
while Wessex fell to his younger brother ^thelred ; but the will 
must have been set aside by the Witan as inconsistent with the ar- 
rangement by which the brothers were to follow one another in or- 
der of age. Both the bequest and the setting aside are of the high- 
est import for our after history ; ,the first as the earliest known in- 
stance of a claim to " bequeath '' the crown as a personal property, 
the second as showing such a claim to be as yet not admitted. 

' This was under Weland, whom we find before and after this in 
the Seine and the Somme. — Munch, Det Norske Folks Hist. pt. iv. 
pp. 200, 209, 21 0. 

* Eng, Chron. (Winch.), a. 860. 

6 



82 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. Ill, viving brother, ^thelred, in 866, the northern storm 
The broke with far other force upon Britain.' Its occu- 
of th? pation had now, indeed, become almost a necessity 
Danelaw. £qj. ^j-^g Wikings. It was the one measure which 
858-878. could draw their other conquests together. They 
already occupied the Faroes and the Shetlands, the 
Orkney Isles and the Hebrides. On either side of 
Britain they were a settled power. The west coast 
of Ireland was dotted with their towns, while east- 
ward their settlements formed a broken line from 
Friesland to Bordeaux. But, in the very heart of 
their field of operations, Britain still lay uncon- 
quered, for their descents on its shores had only 
ended as yet in hard fighting and defeat. And yet 
it was the winning of Britain which was needed 
above all to support and widen their conquests to 
the eastward and westward of it. Had the pirates 
once become masters of this central post the face 
of the west must have changed. Backed by a 
Scandinavian Britain, their isolated colonies along 
the Irish coast must have widened into a dominion 
over all Ireland, while their settlement along the 
Prankish coast might have grown into a territory 
stretching over much of Gaul. In a word, Christen- 
dom would have seen the rise of a power upon its 
border which might have changed the fortunes of 
the western world. Such political considerations, 
indeed, can hardly have affected any save the 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 866. .^thelred's accession marks a new- 
step forward in the consohdation of Wessex. Kent and its depend- 
encies are no longer left detached as a separate under-kingdom ; 
and the king's younger brother^ Alfred, who would otherwise have 
succeeded to the Kentish under-kingdom, becomes " Secundarius." 
— Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 19, 22. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 83 

leaders of the northern warriors, but for every war- chap, m. 
rior there was the ceaseless pressure of the pirates' The 
greed.' Now that its abbeys were wrecked, there of tSF 
was little booty to be got from Ireland; and even °^"^^^^- 
Gaul, wasted as it had been for half a century, was ^^^j^^- 
ceasing to be a prey worth much fighting for. 
Britain, however, still lay practically untouched. 
No spoiler's hand had fallen on most of its greater 
monasteries. No pirate's hand had as yet wrung 
ransom from its royal hoards. From the opening 
of y^thelred's reign, therefore, Britain became the 
main field of northern attack. 

The name, however, under which its assailants ^'^.^ 

coming 

were known susfsrests that a reason for the choice of the 

Danes. 

of this new field of warfare, even more powerful 
than greed or ambition, lay in the appearance of a 
new body of assailants/ It is now that we first hear 
of the Danes. The assailants of the Franks had 
been drawn, as we have seen, from the Northmen of 
South Jutland, those of Ireland from the Northmen 
of Norway. But while these earlier Wikings were 
doing their work on either side of Britain, another 
people of the same Scandinavian blood had been 
taking form along the southwestern coast of the 
present Sweden, and had spread from thence over 
Zeeland with its fellow-isles and the north of our 
Jutland.' These were the men who now came to 

' Hen. Huntingdon, Hist. Angl., lib. v. prooem. (ed. Arnold, p. 138), 
puts this well : " Daci vero terram . . . non obtinere sed praedari stu- 
debant, et omnia destruere, non dominari cupiebant." 

■■^ See Dahlmann, Gesch. von Dannemark, i. 65. 

^ From Othere's voyage (in .Alfred's Orosius), which is our earliest 
historical authority, it is clear that the Danes had reached these lim- 
its before the close of the ninth century. 



84 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP- III, the front under the name of the Danes ; and that 

The they brought a new force and a more national hfe 

of th? to the struggle is plain from the character which it 

Danelaw, immediately took. The petty squadrons which had 

858-878. ^[\\ now harassed the coast of Britain made way for 
hosts larger than had fallen on any country in the 
west; while raid and foray were replaced by the 
regular campaigns of armies who marched to con- 
quer, and whose aim was to settle on the land they 
had won. 

Character ^he uumbcrs in which the Danes drew too;ether 

of their . . »^ 

zva7-farc. sliowcd their consciousness that the work they were 
taking in hand was work such as the pirates had 
never taken in hand before. But their numbers are 
far from explaining the rapidity and completeness 
of their success in the coming strife. The real 
force of the northern warriors, in fact, everywhere lay 
not in numbers, but in their superiority as soldiers 
to the men they met. As assailants, indeed, their 
natural advantages were great ; for their mastery of 
the sea gave them along every coast a secure basis 
of operations, while every river furnished a road for 
their advance.' But the caution and audacity with 
which they availed themselves of these advantages 
showed a natural genius for war. To seize a head- 
land or a slip of land at a river mouth, to draw a 

' It is possible that the boats which may be seen making up the 
Humber with the tide to Goole and the Trent, and which are still 
known as " keels," may fairly represent to us " keels " of earlier 
times. Their large, red-brown sails, about seventy feet long, are but 
a few feet shorter than that of the Wikings' ship of Gokstad ; sails 
of that kind rising above the fringe of reeds and over the long reach- 
es of marsh-land must often have struck terror into the dwellers on 
the Humbrian shores. — (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 85 

trench across it and back their trench with earth- chap^hi. 
works, to haul up their vessels within this camp and The 
assign it a camp-guard, was the prelude to each of tii? 
northern foray ; and it was only when their line of ^^"^^^^- 
retreat was secured that they pushed into the heart 858-878. 
of the land.' From the moment of their advance 
caution seemed exchanged for a reckless daring. 
But their daring was far from being reckless. They 
were, in fact, the first European warriors who re- 
alized the value of quick movement in war. The 
earliest work of the marauders was to seize horses ; 
once mounted, they rode, pillaging, into the heart 
of the land ; and the speed with which they hurried 
along baffled all existing means of defence. While 
alarm beacons were flaming out on hill and head- 
land, while shire-reeve and town-reeve were muster- 
ing men for the fyrd, the Dane had already swooped 
upon abbey and grange. When the shire-host was 
fairly mustered, the foe was back within his camp ; 
and the country folk wasted their valor upon en- 
trenchments which held them easily at bay till the 
black boats were shoved off to sea again. Nor was 
this all. The Danes were as superior to their op- 
ponents in tactics as in strategy. An encounter 
between the shire-levies and the pirates was a strug- 
gle of militia with regular soldiers. The Scandina- 
vian war-band was a band of drilled warriors, tried 

' In their own land, which was penetrated throughout by arms of 
the sea, no spot lay more than ten miles from the water, and the 
whole country was thus necessarily exposed to pirate raids, such as 
those of the Wendish sea-rovers, who, for a time, made a part of the 
coast of Jutland a mere desert. It was under these conditions that 
the Danes had learned their special mode of warfare. See Dahl- 
mann, Geschichte von Dannemark, i. 129, 136. — (A. S. G.) 



S6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iii. in a hundred forays, knit together by discipline and 

The mutual trust, grouped round a leader of their own 

ofth? choosing, and armed from head to foot. Outnum- 

Daneiaw. ^^^ them as they might, a host of farmers hurried 

858-878. from their ploughs, armed with what weapons each 

found to hand, were no match for soldiers such as 

these. 

T/ie i^ ^j^s i-,ow nearly fourteen years since the Danes 

Danes m , -^ -' 

ireiafid. had appeared in the western seas. In 852 a force 
of these " Dubh-Gaill," or Dark Strangers, made its 
way to the Irish coast under a sea king called Olaf 
the Fair, himself no Dane, but a son of one of the 
petty rulers of the Norwegian Upland ; ' and after 
hard fighting with the " Finn-Gaill," or White Stran- 
gers, the Norwegians whom it found in possession of 
the pirate field, the Danes withdrew, to return four 
years after in overwhelming force. From 856 the 
Wikings about Ireland submitted to Olaf, and his 
occupation of Dublin made it the centre of the Ost- 
men." At the same time Ivar the Boneless, who, 
whether a son of the mysterious Ragnar Lodbrok 
or no, was a Skioldung, or of the kingly race among 
the Danes, seems from the Irish annals to have been 
fighting in Munster. But for ten years we see noth- 
ing more of these leaders or of their Danish follow- 
ers ; and it is not till 866 that we find them united 
in an attack on the greater island of Britain. 
While the Ostmen gathered in a fleet of two hun- 
dred vessels under Olaf the Fair, and threw them- 

^ The Landnama Book calls him a son of King Ingialld, who came 
of the stock of Halfdan Whitefoot, King of Upland. 

* Todd, War of Gaedhill and Gaill, Introd. pp. Ixxviii. Ixxix. " Ost- 
men " was the name given to the pirates settled on the east coast of 
Ireland.— (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 3^ 

selves on the Scot kingdom across the Firth of chap, m. 
Forth, a Danish host from Scandinavia itself, under The 
Ivar the Boneless, landed in 866 on the shores of of th? 
East Anglia/ We can hardly doubt that this dis- J^^^a^. 
trict had been the object of many attacks since the 858-878. 
raid on its shores which is recorded more than twen- 
ty years before,' for the Danes were suffered to win- 
^ ter within its bounds, and it was only in the spring 
of 867 that they horsed themselves and rode for the 
north. 

Their aim was Northumbria ; and as thev struck ,, "^^'^ . 

. . -' Danes in 

over Mid-Britam for York they found the country York. 
torn by the wonted anarchy, and two rivals contend- 
ing, as of old, for the throne. Though the claimants 
united in presence of this common danger, their union 
came too late.' The Danes had seized York at their 
first arrival, and now fell back before the Northum- 
brian host to shelter within its defences, which seem 
still to have consisted of a wooden stockade crown- 
ing the mound raised by the last Roman burghers 
round their widened city.* The flight and seeming 
panic of their foes roused the temper of the North- 
umbrians; they succeeded in breaking through the 
stockade, and, pouring in with its flying defenders, 

* The English Chronicle calls it a. " micel here," but names no 
leader, -^thelweard, however, calls it " classis tyranni Ig^vares ;" 
and the Chronicle names Inguar and his brother Hubba as leaders 
of the " here " when it conquered East Anglia four years later. The 
lists of after writers are made up of all the names mentioned in the 
subsequent story. I have omitted all reference to the legend of 
Ragnar Lodbrok's death, which does not make its appearance for a 
couple of centuries. 

? Eng. Chron. a. 838. ^ Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. lib. ii. c. vi. 

* " Non enim tunc adhuc ilia civitas firmos et stabilitos muros illis 
temporibus habebat." — Asser (Wise), p. 18. 



S8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR III. were already masters of the bulk of the town when 

The the Danes turned in a rally of despair. From that 

of til? moment the day was lost. Not only were the two 

Danelaw, j^j^gs slain, but their men were hunted and cut down 

858-878. over all the country-side, till it seemed as if the whole 
host of Northumbria lay on the fatal field.' So over- 
whelming was the blow that a general terror hindered 
all further resistance ; those who survived the fight 
" made peace with the Pagans," and Northumbria 
sank, without further struggle, into a tributary king- 
dom of the Dane. 

7^umo/ g^^ ii^Q loss of its frecdom was only the first re- 

Northum- , -itt' i i- 

bria. sult of this terrible overthrow. With freedom went 
the whole learning and civilization of the North. 
These, as we have seen, were concentrated in the 
great abbeys which broke the long wastes from the 
H umber to the Forth, and whose broad lands had 
as yet served as refuge for what remained of order 
and industry in the growing anarchy of the country. 
But it was mainly the abbeys that roused the pirates' 
greed; and so unsparing was their attack after the 
victory at York ' that, in what had till now been the 
main home of English monasticism, monasticism 
wholly passed away. The doom that had long ago 
fallen on Jarrow and Wearmouth fell now on all the 
houses of the coast. The abbey of Tynemouth was 
burned. Streoneshealh, the house of Hild and of 
Cadmon, vanished so utterly that its very name dis- 

^ " lUic maxima ex parte omnes Northanhymbrensium coeti, occi- 
sis duobus regibus; cum multis nobilibus deleti occubuerunt." — As- 
ser (Wise), p. i8. Flor. Wore, gives the date of this battle as Palm 
Sunday, or March 21, 867. 

^ Bernicia, however, was not ravaged nor its abbeys destroyed till 
Halfdene's raid in 875. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. gg 

appeared, and the little township which took its place chap, m. 
in later da3^s bore the Danish name of Whitby. It The 
was the same with the inland houses. Cuthbert's of tSf 
Melrose, Ceadda's Lastingham, no longer broke the ^^^^^^^- 
silence of Tweeddale or Pickering. If Wilfrid's 858-878. 
church at Ripon still remained standing,' his ab- 
bey perished ; and though Archbishop ^thelberht's 
church still towered over York in the glory of its 
new stonework, we hear no more of library or school. 
As a see, indeed, York, in time, profited by the blow. 
On the general fabric of the church in the north it 
fell heavily : after the sack of Holy Island, the Bish- 
op of Lindisfarne was hunted from refuge to refuge 
with the relics of Cuthbert ; ' the Bishop of Lindsey 
was driven to seek a new home in the south ; while 
the bishopric at Hexham came wholly to an end." 
But the ruin of its fellow-sees brought to York a 
new greatness. As representative of conquered 
Northumbria, and as the one power which remained 
permanent amidst the endless revolutions of the pi- 
rate state which superseded it, the Primate at York 
became the religious centre of the North at a mo- 
ment when the North regained the political individ- 
uality it seemed to have lost since the days of Ead- 
berht.* The gain of the primacy, however, was a 
small matter beside the losses of the country at large. 
The blows of the Dane were aimed with so fatal a 
precision at the centres of its religious and intellec- 
tual life that of the houses which served as the schools, 
libraries, and universities of Northumbria not one 

^ It was destroyed by Eadred in 948. 

^ Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. lib. ii. c. vi. 

^ Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 274. * Ibid. 273. 



^O THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. remained standing In the regions over which the 

The conquerors swept. So thoroughly was the work of 

of the' destruction done that the country where letters and 

Danelaw, "culture had till now found their favorite home re- 

858-878. mained for centuries to come the rudest and most 
ignorant part of Britain. 
The ^g ygf however, the Danes seem to have had lit- 

threaten tlc aim but plundcr ; and they were hardly masters 
of Deira when, setting up Ecgberht as an under- 
lying,' they turned to seek new spoil in the south. 
They seized the passage of the Trent at Nottingham, 
formed their winter camp there,' and threatened 
Mercia in the coming spring. But their way was 
suddenly barred. At the threat of invasion the Mer- 
cian king, Burhred, with his Witan, called for aid 
from his West-Saxon over-lord.' The inaction of 
^thelred through the strife in Northumbria shows 
that, in spite of the submission at Dore," the north- 
ern realm stood practically without the West-Saxon 
supremacy. But time and the policy of the house 
of Ecgberht had tightened the bonds which linked 
central Britain to the West-Saxon crown; and the 
appeal for help against the Welsh in ^thelwulf's 
days, as now for help against the Danes, shows that 
Mercia thoroughly recognized its position as an 
under-kingdom. The call was heard, and a rapid 
march brought ^thelred's host to the Danish front 

1 "Sub suo dominio regem Ecgberhtum prsefecerunt." — Sim. 
Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. lib. ii. c. vi. 

"^ Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 19, 2C ; Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 868. 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 19. 

* The Northumbrians had owned Ecgberht as their over-lord at 
Dore, on the borders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, in 827. Eng. 
Chron. a. 827.— (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. gj 

at the passage of the Trent. At the head of his chap. m. 
joint army of Mercians and West Saxons the king The 
sought at once to give battle. The Danes, however, '"^nii? 
were too good soldiers to be drawn into the field ; ^^^w- 
they fell back on their invariable policy of fighting 858-878. 
behind earthworks, and the defences of their camp 
proved too strong to be broken through, even by the 
fierce attacks of the English host.* But if yEthel- 
red failed to crush the Dane, he at any rate saved 
Mercia, for a peace between the Danes and Mercians 
at last parted the combatants. While ^thelred 
withdrew to Wessex, the Danes fell back, bafHed, to 
winter at York ; and the severity of their losses 
seems to be shown by their inactivity for the rest of 
the year." 

When they next quitted York, indeed, it was to '^^'^"' 

coiioticst 

seek another prey than Mercia. It was the wealth of East 
of the great Fen abbeys that drew the pirate force, ^^^'"' 
with Ivar and his brother Hubba still at its head, at 
the close of 869, to an attack on the East- Anglian 
realm. The Lincolnshire men may, as after tradi- 
tion held,' have thrown themselves across their path ; 
but if so, it was to be routed in as decisive an over- 
throw as that of York, and Peterborough, Crowland, 
and Ely were sacked and fired, while their monks 
fled or lay slain among the ruins. From the land 
of the Gyrwas, however, they suddenly struck for 
East Anglia itself," and, crossing the Devil's Dyke 
without resistance, raised their winter camp at Thet- 

1 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 20. 
" Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 869. 

^ Ingulf gives plentiful details of this inroad ; but it is impossible 
to make more than general use of so late a forgery. 
* Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 870. 



^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, in. ford. The success of their inroad was complete. 

The Brave as their strife with Mercia but a few years be- 

of th? fore shows them to have been, the East Engle were 

Danelaw, utterly defeated in two attacks on the Danish camp ; 

858-878. and the strife ended with the capture of their king, 
Eadmund, who was brought prisoner before the pi- 
rate leaders, bound to a tree, and shot to death with 
arrows. His martyrdom by the heathen made him 
the St. Sebastian of English legend ; in later days 
his figure gleamed from the pictured windows of 
church after church along the eastern coast, and a 
stately abbey which bore his name rose over his relics. 
They How Qfrcat was the terror stirred by these succes- 

Wessex. sivc victorics was shown m the action of Mercia, for, 
though still free from actual attack, it cowered panic- 
stricken before the Dane, and by payment of tribute 
owned his supremacy. This submission brought 
Wessex face to face with the pirates. The southern 
kingdom stood utterly alone, for the work of Ecg- 
berht had been undone at a blow, and but five years' 
fighting had sufficed to tear England north of Thames 
from its over-lordship. It is hard to believe that such 
a revolution can have been wholly wrought by the 
Danish sword, or that conquests so rapid and so com- 
plete as those of Ivar can have been made possible 
save by the temper of the lands he won. The Eng- 
lish realms were still, in fact, far from owning them- 
selves as an English nation. To Northumbria, to 
Mercia, to East Anglia, their conquest by the Dane 
must have seemed little save a transfer from one for- 
eign over-lord to another; and it may be that in 
each of the three lands there were men who preferred 
the supremacy of the Dane to the supremacy of the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. g^ 

West Saxon. But the loss of the two kingdoms chap. m. 
left Wessex alone before the heathen foe. The time The 
had come when it had to fight, not for supremacy, of tii? 
but for life. It was the last obstacle in the pirates' ^^^^.w. 
path. Elsewhere all had gone well with him. Brit- 858-878. 
ain seemed on the point of becoming a Scandina- 
vian land. The Orkney Jarls had conquered Caith- 
ness. The Scot king had become a tributary of 
the Northmen. Northumbria and East Anglia lay 
in Danish hands, while Mid-Britain owned their su- 
premacy. Nor did the conquest of Wessex promise 
to be a hard matter. Except in his one march upon 
Nottingham, ^thelred had done nothing to save 
his under-kingdoms from the wreck ; and when the 
pirate host set out from East Anglia its work in 
southern Britain promised to be as easy and complete 
as its work in the north. 

The leader in the new fray was no lonsfer Rasrnar s '-^fte 

. Danes in 

son, Ivar, who seems to have returned to his con- Berkshire. 
quest of Deira, while his brother Hubba had put 
afresh to sea with a Wiking fleet which we shall find 
later on in the Bristol Channel, but Guthrum, or 
Gorm, who may (as later genealogies told) have been 
of kin to the Gorm who was soon to draw the Dan- 
ish people together into a kingdom of Denmark. 
With him marched BcCgsceg, the Danish King of" 
Bernicia, and a crowd of jarls — Sidroc the Old and 
S|idroc the Young, Osbern, and Fraena and Harald 
among them.' In 871 their host sailed up the Thames 
past London, and seized a tongue of land some half 
a mile from Reading for its camp.^ The country 

* We know these as having fallen at Ashdown. — Asser (ed. Wise), 
p. 23. * Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 871. 



QA THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. which was to form the scene of the coming struggle 
m was the square of rough forest-country to which the 
^uh? abundance of " bearroc," or box-trees, among its wood- 
Daneiaw. j^nds gave the name of Berkshire/ a district wedged 
858-878. as it were into an angle which the Thames makes 
as it runs from its head-waters eastward to Oxford, 
and then turns suddenly to the south to cleave its 
way through chalk uplands to Reading and the Ken- 
net valley. The bulk of the shire was still wild and 
thinly peopled, for chalk downs spread over the 
heart of it from the Thames to Hampshire, and the 
fertile Kennet valley to the south lay pressed be- 
tween these uplands and the barren and tangled 
country about Windsor. But the northern escarp- 
ment of the downs looked over the broad reaches 
of the Vale of White Horse, where the deep clay 
soil lent itself to tillage, where English settlements 
clustered thickly, and manors of the West -Saxon 
kines were scattered over the land. 
^//red. One of these king's tuns, that of Wantage,' had 
been the birthplace of the youngest of y^thelwulf's 
sons, the v^theling y^lfred.' Young as he still was, 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. i. " Ilia paga quae nominatur Bearrocscire, 
quse paga taliter vocatur a Berroc sylva, ubi buxus abundantissime 
nascitur." 

2 " In villa regia quae dicitur Wanading."— Asser (ed. Wise), p. i. 

= For yElfred's life the main authority must be the work attribu- 
ted to Asser. Its genuineness, which was disputed by Mr. Wright 
(Biographia Britannica Literaria), is admitted by almost all other 
scholars; though the critical examination of Pauli (Life of Alfred, 
pp. 4-1 1) shows in how damaged a state the book has come down 
to us. In spite of all difficulties, however, " no theory of the author- 
ship or date of the work," says Mr. Earle (Parallel Chronicles, In- 
trod. p. Ivi.). "has ever been proposed which, on the whole, meets 
the facts of the case better than that set forth in the book itself, 
that it was written in 893." Asser has embodied the whole con- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. g^ 

i^lfred's life had been a stirring and eventful one. chap. m. 
He was but four years old when he was sent with a The 
company of nobles to Rome/ on an embassy which of th? 
paved the way for ^thelwulfs own visit two years ^^"^law. 
later, and he returned to the imperial city in his 858-878. 
father's train. The boy's long stay there, as well as 
at the Prankish court, left a mark on his mind which 
we can trace through all his after-life. English as 
Alfred was to the core, his international temper, his 
freedom from a narrow insularism, his sense of the 
common interests and brotherhood of Christian na- 
tions, pointed back to the childish days when he 
looked on the wonders of Rome or listened to the 
scholars and statesmen who thronged the court of 
Charles the Bald. There was little, as we have seen, 
to break the peace of the land as the ^^theling grew 
to manhood save passing raids of the Northmen 
from Gaul, and the vigor and restlessness of the boy's 
temper found no outlet for itself but in the chase. 
But the thirst for knowledge was already quicken- 
ing within him. It was one of the bitter regrets of 
his after-life that at, this time, when he had leisure 
and will to learn, he could find no man to teach him. 
But what he could learn he learned. The love of 
English verse, which never left him, dated from these 
earlier days. It was a book of English songs which 
(if we accept the story in spite of its difficulties)^ his 
mother promised to the first of her sons who learned 

tents of the existing chronicle from 851 to 887, a point at which 
there are good grounds for beheving the Chronicle, as Alfred found 
it, to have ended. This coincidence " is strongly in favor of the 
professed date." 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 853. 

* See Pauli's criticisms, Life of Alfred, p. 51. 



^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^in. to read it. The beauty of its letters caught Alfred's 

The eye, and, seizing the book from his mother's hand, he 

of the sought a master, who repeated it to him till the boy's 

Danelaw. lYiemorj enabled him to recite its poems by heart.' 

858-878. ^s ygt, however, his temper had little political im- 
■^'f portance, for he stood far from the throne. But 

position, death was already paving his way to it. ^thelbald 
enjoyed the crown but two years after his father's 
death ; and only six years later the death of ^thel- 
berht in 866, and the accession of his one surviving 
brother, yEthelred, set Alfred next in the accepted 
order of succession to the West-Saxon throne. The 
stress of events, too, called him now to sterner studies 
than those of letters ; for though the consolidation of 
the Eastern Kingdom with the rest of the monarchy 
hindered him from becoming its under-king, he held 
an office, that of Secundarius, in which we may, per- 
haps, see a germ of the later Justiciarship ; and it 
was in discharge of these new duties that he marched, 
at nineteen, with his brother to the Trent. The pol- 
icy of Ecgberht's house aimed at a close union with 
central Britain : a sister of Alfred was already wife 
of the Mercian king ; and in yElfred's union at this 
moment with the daughter of an ealdorman of the 
Gainas, we see a trace of the same policy which brought 
about, in later days, the marriage of his own daughter 
with the Mercian, yE^thelred." But the marriage 
feast was roughly broken up, for the young husband 
was seized in the midst of it with a disease, probably 
that of epilepsy, from which he was never afterwards 
to be wholly free. Neither sickness nor marriage, 
however, held yElfred back from the field ; he fought 
* Asser (ed.-Wise), p. i6. ^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 59. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 97 

in the West-Saxon ranks at Nottingham/ and now chap^hi. 
that the Dane attacked his own Wessex he led the The 
van of his brother's host. of the" 

It may have been to save the home of his child- Danelaw, 
hood that the young setheling fought so stoutly in 858-878. 
the after fights. But king and people fought as Success of 

^ir 11- ir f ^f ^ ^1 the Danes. 

stoutly as .Alfred hnnseli, for now^ that they were 
attacked on their own ground the West Saxons 
turned fiercely at bay. We have seen how, from the 
first, the Gwent had been screened from invasion by 
the impenetrable barriers that guarded it on every 
side, and how the hosts of its earlier assailants had 
fallen back before steeps such as those of Wanbor- 
ough and Ashdown. A far different fortune, how- 
ever, seemed to await the Danes. They had no 
sooner reached Reading than one of their marauding 
parties was cut to pieces by a force hastily gathered 
under the ealdormen of the district, and the check 
gave ^thelred and his brother time to hurry to the 
field;' but though the king at once assailed the 
camp which the pirates had formed by running an 
entrenchment from the Kennet to the Thames, a 
desperate fight ended in his repulse, and the defeat 
threw open Wessex to the invaders. As the beaten 
Englishmen fell back along the Thames, the pirates 
pushed rapidly by the ancient track known as the 
Ridgeway, along the edge of the upland which looks 
over the Vale of White Horse, till on the height of 
Ashdown they threw up intrenchments and again 
encamped.' 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 868. 

" Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 871 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 21, 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 871. 

■ 7 



98 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP^iii. The march of the Danes showed their genius for 

The war. They had, in fact, thrown themselves on their 

of the enemy's rear, and not only cut off his communica- 

Daneiaw. ^-JQj^g ^^-^ ^j^g Gwent,but turned its very escarpments 

858-878. against him, for it was ^thelred and not the Danes 
The that had to storm the heights of Ashdown in the 

Ashdoxvn. coming struggle. From such a post, indeed, all Wes- 
sex lay at the mercy of the invaders. But they had 
still to fight for it, for neither ^thelred nor Alfred 
were men to give up hope at a single blow. Four 
days after the fight at Reading the English army, 
reinforced probably by the men of Wantage and the 
neighborhood, stood again face to face with its foes, 
and yF^lfred, who led the advance, at once attacked 
them.' Posted, however, as they were on a hill cov- 
ered with thick brushwood and sheltered by their 
usual intrenchments, the Danes held the setheling's 
troops stoutly at bay; and though message after 
message called ^thelred to his aid, the king refused 
to march till the mass he was hearing was done. 
" God first and man after," .^thelred answered his 
brother's cry ; and ^Fllfred could only save his men 
from utter rout by charging again and again, " like 
a wild boar," up the slope. The king, however, 
showed a cool judgment in his delay, for his men 
were well in hand before he moved, and the general 
advance of his army at last cleared the fatal hill. 
The fight raged fiercest round a stunted thorn-tree, 
which men in after-days noted curiously (" I have 
seen it with my own eyes," says Asser), and here 
with loud shouts Dane and Englishman battled 
hard. But the shouts were hushed at last. The 
' Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 22, 23. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. gg 

day went for ^thelred. King Baegsceg fell beneath chap, m. 
the sword of the king himself, and five pirate jarls The 
lay among the corpses which were heaped upon the of tiuf 

£p| J 1 Danelaw. 

But, routed as it was, Guthrum's host sought shel- 858-878. 
ter in the camp at Reading, and its intrenchments^//"'-^^/^- 
again held the brothers at bay. The West Saxons^'''' ' "' 
still, indeed, kept their mastery in the field, beating 
back the Danes as they tried a new dash along the 
line of the Kennet, and holding them in check at 
Basing, when with forces strengthened by the arri- 
val of fresh troops from the Thames they struck 
southw^ard for Hampshire. But the camp at Read- 
ing remained impregnable, and every hour of delay 
told fatally against ^thelred. Already weakened 
by these fierce encounters, the West-Saxon leader 
was hampered above all by the difficulty of holding 
his levies together. Men called fi'om farm and field, 
and looking for support to the rations they brought 
with them, were eager to fight and go home ; while 
the Danes were constantly reinforced by fresh-comers, 
and spurred to new efforts by the need of procuring 
supplies from the country they won. A change in 
the relative weight of the two armies at last showed 
itself, for a new raid upon Surrey brought the pi- 
rates better luck than its predecessors ; and after a 
brave fight at Merton, in which their king was mor- 
tally wounded, the West Saxons drew off, beaten, 
from the field.' When y^thelred's death, in April,' 
added its gloom to the gloom of defeat, and Alfred 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 871. ^ Ibid. 

' Flor. of Wore, dates it three weeks after Easter, which, in 871, 
would make it April 23. 



Mercia. 



lOo THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iii. took his place on the throne, the young king (he 

The numbered but two-and-twenty years) stood ahnost 

of the alone in front of the enemy, for at the news of his 

Danelaw, brother's death the English levies had broken up 

858-878. and gone home. 
The At this very hour a larQ:e fleet of Danes pushed 

Danes ... 

master up Thames to join their fellows at Reading, and vEl- 
fred was forced to hurry from his brother's grave at 
Wimborne with what men he could muster to meet 
a fresh advance of the foe. But with such forces 
little could be done to check their march. They 
seem already to have entered the Gwent and to have 
encamped at Wilton, the early "tun " to which our 
Wiltshire owes its name, before y^lfred could meet 
them \ and a desperate attack which the young king 
made on them there was roughly beaten off. A 
succession of petty defeats forced Alfred at last to 
a shameful truce ; and, at the counsel of his Witan, 
he bought with hard money the withdrawal of the 
Danes from the land. The shame was hard to bear, 
for though bargains of this sort had been common 
enough in Ireland and Gaul, a purchased peace had, 
as yet, scarcely been known among Englishmen ; 
and the distress of -Alfred may be seen in a vow of 
alms to the holy places in Rome, and even in far-off 
India, for deliverance from his foes, which marked 
this dark hour of his history." But if the gold won 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 871 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 25. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Canterbury), a. 883. "This year Sighelm and 
.^thelstan carried to Rome the alms which the king vowed to send 
thither, and also to India, to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, when 
they sat down against the army at London." The Danish " here " 
retired, after the truce, to winter at London (Eng. Chron. a. 872) ; 
but we have no account of .Alfred's sitting down against them ; and 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jqi 

a respite for Wessex, it left the pirates free to com- chap, m. 

plete their work in the centre of the island. Grant- The 

ing peace, no doubt on terms of tribute, to the ruler of th? 

of Mid-Britain, the host after a year spent in North- ^^neiaw. 

umbria, returned to its camp at Torksey, in Lincoln- 858-878. 

shire, to gather fresh forces for a new campaign ;' 

then, in the spring of 874, the Danes burst upon 

Mercia. We hear of no resistance. King Burhred 

fled over sea without striking a blow to find refuge 

and a grave at Rome ; while his conquerors, setting 

up a puppet king, Ceolwulf, in his room, took oath 

of vassalage from him and his subjects, and wintered 

at Repton, sacking and firing the great abbey which 

served as the burial-place of the Mercian kings." 

Their mastery of central Britain, however, only Division 

served to 2:ive the Danes a firmer base from which D.misk 

If 
to complete their conquest of the island, both in 

north and south. With the spring of 875 their 

force broke asunder : one part of it, with Halfdene 

at its head, marching northward to the Tyne to 

complete the reduction of Bernicia.' The aim of 

the pirates still remained mainly that of plunder, 

and the religious houses which had escaped till 

now fell in this fiercer storm. Coldingham, the 

as this is a late copy of the Chronicle, its entry may be a mere blun- 
der for Asser's entry, " Paganorum exercitus Lundoniam adiit et ibi 
hiemavit," or, rather, Huntingdon's copy of this, "quando hostilis 
exercitus hiemavit apud Lundoniam." 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 873. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 874; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 26; ^thel- 
weard, a. 872. " Myrcii confirmant cum eis foederis pactum stipendi- 
aque statuunt." From the Chronicle it seems that the Danes took 
part of Mercia, leaving -part to Ceolwulf. Is this the beginning of 
the division into Danish and English Mercia.? 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 875. 



% 



I02 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iii. house of Ebbe, was burned to the ground. Bishop 
The Eardulf was driven from Lindisfarne, carrying with 
ofth? bim the body of Cuthbert as his chiefest treasure, 
Danelaw. ^^ wander with it for years from one hiding-place to 
858-878. another.' When Httle remained to glean from the 
wasted land, Halfdene led his men through Cum- 
bria, where Carlisle was entirely destroyed, and on 
through Strath-Clyde'' to the north, where the Scot 
king Constantine was battling for life against Thor- 
stein, a son of Olaf the Fair, and the Norwegian 
Jarl Sigurd, who had now established himself in the 
Orkneys. Thorstein and Sigurd overran the north- 
ern parts of the realm, while Halfdene advanced 
from the south, till the Scots, pressed between the 
two pirate hosts, bought peace for the moment by 
the cession of Caithness. But while one portion of 
the host was thus busy beyond the Humber, Guth- 
rum was leading the other half from their winter- 
quarters at Repton to Cambridge, to prepare for a 
final onset upon Wessex. The greatness of the 
contest had now drawn to Britain the whole strength 
of the Northmen. Ireland won a long rest as its 
Ostmen flocked to join their brethren over the sea ; 
and the force of the pirates in Gaul was so weak- 
ened that Charles was able to drive them from their 
stronghold at Angers. But the weakness of the 
pirates to east and west only pointed to a general 

1 Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 875. 

'^ " Pictos atque Stretduccenses depopulati sunt," Sim. Durh. 
"He made raids on the Picts and the Strath-Clyde Wealhs," Eng. 
Chron. (Winch.), a. 875. " Inducunt Pihtis bellum Cum brisque," 
yEthelweard, a. 875, lib. iv. c. 3. Skene notes this as "the first ap- 
pearance of the term of Cumbri or Cumbrians, as applied to the 
Britons of Strath-Clyde." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 103 

concentration of their force upon Britain, and it was chap. m. 
with a host swollen by reinforcements from every The 
quarter that Guthrum, in 876, set sail for the south/ oMh? 
yElfred had equipped a few ships which served to ^^"eiaw. 
beat off some smaller parties that attacked the 858-878. 
coast, but the little squadron was helpless to meet G^uhrum's 
such a fleet as now put out from the harbors oi^Tackon 
East Anglia. Coasting by Dover, Guthrum made, ^"^^^• 
like the earlier marauders, for the Dorset coast, and 
seized a neck of land near Wareham, between the 
Piddle and the Frome, for his camp. Alfred at 
once marched on these lines ; but they were too 
strong to storm, and gold, we can hardly doubt, 
again bought a treaty in which the pirates swore on 
every relic that could be gathered, as well as on 
their own Odin's ring, a sacred bracelet smeared 
with the blood of beasts offered at the god's altar, 
to quit the king's land. yElfred's hold was no 
sooner loosened, however, than half of the northern 
host took horse, and striking across country seized 
Exeter to winter in."" The seizure of the city may 
have been looked on by the Danes as no breach of 
faith, for Exeter was still in part a British town; but 
it was just this that made their presence there so 
serious a danger, and through the winter Alfred 
girded himself for a resolute effort to drive them 
out before their success could cause a Welsh rising. 
At break of spring in 877 the West-Saxon army 
closed round the town, while a hired fleet' cruised 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 875 ; Asser. (ed. Wise), p. 27. 
^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 877, 

^ " Impositisque piratis in illis vias maris custodiendas commisit." 
— Asser (ed. Wise), p. 29. 



I04 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iii. off the coast to guard against rescue. A storm, 

The which drove their boats on the rocks of Swanage, 

cf th? foiled the efforts of the freebooters who remained 

Danelaw. ^^^ VVarcham to rescue their brethren, and Exeter 

858-878.' was at last starved into surrender, while Guthrum 
again swore to leave Wessex.' 

The sur- f J-^g Danisli host withdrew, in fact, into the Severn 

prise of 

ivessex. vallcy to wintcr at Gloucester." But y^lfred had 
hardly disbanded the army which had taken Exeter 
when Hubba, Ivar's brother, with a fleet which had 
been ravaging in the Bristol Channel, struck up the 
Severn to Guthrum's aid. All thought of the oath 
they had sworn at once passed from the minds of the 
invaders ; and at the opening of 878 Hubba, with a 
squadron of twenty-three ships, made his way to the 
coast of Devonshire, while the main body of the 
northern host again crossed the Avon and pushed, 
by a swift and secret march, as far as Chippenham." 
The surprise of Wessex was complete. The Danes 
were in the heart of the Gwent before tidings of their 
advance could call either king or people to arms, and 
the whole district east of the Selwood lay at their 
mercy. To gather the fyrd of Hampshire or Wilts 
or Berkshire in face of the pirates was impossible. 
Their activity made them masters of the land; "many 
of the folk they drove beyond sea " over the Bristol 
Channel, "and the greater part of the rest they forced 
to obey them."* Alfred alone remained untouched 
by the terror about him. Falling back through the 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 877. 

* .^thelweard, a. 877, lib. iv. c. 3. 

= Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 30. 

* Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 105 

Selwood, on the westernmost fragment of Wessex, chap, m. 
the land of the Somer-s^tas and Defn-s^etas, he seems The 
even there to have found his efforts to gather a force of t^he^ 
baffled for a while by civil strife ;' and the band which P^neiaw. 
still followed the king made its way with difficulty 858-878. 
to the marshes that occupied the heart of Somer- 
setshire.' From Langport to the site of the later 
Bridgewater, the country between Polden Hill and 
the Quantocks was little more than a vast morass 
drained by the deep channel of the Parret. The 
local names of the district, Sedgemoor, on whose 
half-reclaimed flats Monmouth was to meet his doom, 
the "zoys" or rises, crowned now-a-days with marsh- 
villages, such as Chedzoy and Middlezoy, preserve 
a record of the flood-drowned fen in which Alfred 
sought shelter. In the midst of it, at a point where 
the Tone, flowing northward from Taunton, strikes 
the Parret, lies Athelney, a low lift of ground some 
two acres in extent, girded in by almost impassable 
fen-lands. It was at Athelney that the king threw 
up a fort and waited for brighter days.' 

A jewel of blue enamel, enclosed in a setting of ^tfeatof 
gold, with the words round it " Alfred had me 
wrought," was found here, in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and still recalls the memories of this gallant 
stand. It was only later legend* that changed it 
into a solitary flight, as it turned the three months 
of yElfred's stay in this fastness into three years of 

' " Alfredo," says ^thelweard, a. 886, " quem ingenio, quem 
occursu, non superaverat civilis discordia saeva." 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 30. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 33. 

* The legend of St. Neot, written at the end of the tenth century, 
of which fragments break our actual text of Asser. 



I06 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. hiding. The three months were, in fact, months of 
The active preparation for a new struggle. Athelney 
of the was a position from which Alfred could watch close- 
Daneiaw. |y ^|-,g movements of his foes, and with the first burst 
858-878. of spring he found himself ready to attack them. 
Whatever disunion may have thwarted him before 
must now have been hushed, for the fyrd of Devon- 
shire gathered round its Ealdorman Odda, and fall- 
ing suddenly on Hubba, whose squadron was harry- 
ing the coast, cut his men to pieces;' while the men 
of Somerset rallied round their Ealdorman, yE^thel- 
noth. In the second week of May, 878, the whole 
host of the West Saxons mustered under their young 
king's standard at Ecgberht's stone on the east of 
Selwood. Till now their gathering had been hidden 
from the Danes by this great screen of woodland, 
and when they burst through it into the older Wes- 
sex the surprise may have been as complete as when 
the Danes burst in from Chippenham. Whatever 
was the cause of his success, .Alfred no sooner found 
their host at Ethandun or Edington, near Westbury, 
than he defeated it in a great battle, and drove the 
beaten warriors to seek shelter in their camp. But 
the camp at Edington, unlike the camps which had 
hitherto repulsed the English, had no outlet by river 
to the sea; it was possible to cut off its supplies, 
and a siege of fourteen days forced the Danes to 
surrender.^ 
The Peace f hc Struggle had been a short one, but the com- 

of Wed- '-''-' 

more, pletcncss of Alfred's victory was seen in its results. 
The spirit of the assailants was utterly broken ; and 

1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878 ; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 33. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878 ; Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 33, 34. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 107 

while the bulk of the pirate host withdrew, under a chap^hi. 
leader named Hasting, to their old quarters in Gaul, The 
Guthrum, the leader of the rest, bound himself, by of th? 
a solemn Peace at Wedmore, a village on the north ^^neiaw. 
of the Polden Hills,' to become a Christian, and to 858-878. 
quit y^lfred's realm. The treaty itself is lost,' but 
its provisions are, no doubt, marked in the events 
that followed. Not only did the Danes withdraw 
from all England south of the Thames, but they 
left in i^lfred's hands all England westward of the 
Watling Street, the land of the Hwiccas, the upper 
part of the valley of the Thames, and the whole 
valley of the Severn. The rich pastures along the 
Cherwell, the downs of the Cotswolds, the forest- 
tract of Arden, the flats which lay about the still de- 
serted ruins of the later Chester, Oxford, Worcester, 
and Gloucester, were thus rescued from heathen rule. 
The rescue of this district, however, was a small 
matter beside the fact that Wessex itself was saved. 
In the dark hour when v^lfred lay watching frorii 
his fastness of Athelney, men believed that the whole 
island had passed into the invader's hands. Once 
settled in the south, as they were already settled in 
central and northern England, the Danes would have 
made short work of what resistance lingered "on else- 
where, and a few years would have sufficed to make 
England a Scandinavian country. All danger of 
this had vanished with the Peace of Wedmore. The 
whole outlook of the pirates was changed. Dread 
as yElfred might the sword that hung over him, the 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 35. 
* The existing "Alfred and Guthrum's Peace " is, as we shall 
see, of later date. 



loS THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. Danes themselves were as yet in no mood to renew 

The their attack upon Wessex ; and with the abandon- 

^fihe rnent of this attack not only was all hope of winning 

Danelaw. Britain, as a whole, abandoned, but all chance of 

858-878. making it a secure base and starting-point for wider 

Scandinavian conquests passed away. 
Its effect en Tj^g ^idc of invasiou, in fact, had turned; and 

Europe. i • i i i --r^i i • i 

Europe felt that it had turned. Ihe struggle with 
the West Saxons had been marked by a general 
pause in the operations of the pirates elsewhere, for 
their number was so small in relation to the area 
over which they fought that their concentration for 
any great struggle in one quarter meant their weak- 
ening and retreat in another. It is clear, from the 
general aspect of the war in Gaul, that the conquest 
of the Danelaw, and the absorption of a large force 
in its settlement, had already weakened the strength 
of the northern onset upon the Franks. The cour- 
age of the peoples across the Channel rose as the 
jDressure of the Northmen became lighter; and we 
see in every quarter a growing resistance to the in- 
vaders. But this resistance took a new vigor when 
the Danes were thrown back from Wessex. The 
spell of terror was broken. Nowhere had the at- 
tack been so resolute; nowhere had the forces of 
the pirates been so great ; nowhere had their cam- 
paigns been conducted on so steady and regular a 
plan ; nowhere had they so nearly reached the verge 
of success ; and nowhere had they so utterly failed. 
The ease and completeness with which the invaders 
had won the bulk of Britain only brought out in 
stronger relief the completeness of their repulse from 
the south. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jq^ 

Great, however, as were the results of Alfred's chap, m. 
victory, the fact remained that the bulk of Britain The 
lay still in Danish hands. If we look at it in its of th? 
relation to England as a whole, the treaty of Wed- ^^neiaw. 
more was the acknowledgment of a great defeat. 858^878. 
Bravely as the house of Ecgberht had fought, thenenaf^e- 
work of Ecgberht was undone.' The dominion 
which he had built up was wrecked like the do- 
minion of the Karolings ; and for the moment it 
seemed yet more completely wrecked. The blows 
of the Northmen had fallen, indeed, as heavily on 
the one dominion as on the other ; but in the Karo- 
lingian Empire their settlements were scattered and 
few, nor had they any importance save in further- 
ing the tendency of its various peoples to fall apart 
into their old isolation. In England, on the other 
hand, the Danes had won the bulk of the land for 
their own. Beaten as they were from Wessex, all 
northern, all eastern, and a good half of central 
Britain remained Scandinavian ground. The set- 
tlements of the Northmen in Frankland, those in 
'Friesland or on the Loire, even the more perma- 
nent Norman settlements at a later time on the 
Seine, were too small to sway in other than in- 
direct ways the fortunes of the States across the 
Channel. But in Britain the Danish conquests out- 
did in extent and population what was left to the 
English kinsf, and the realm of Alfred saw across 
Watling Street a rival whose power was equal to, 
or even greater than, its own. 

Nor was this conquest a mere work of the sword. TiuDams 

r -11 in North-, 

With the change of masters went a social revoiu- umbria. 
tion, for over the whole space, from the Thames to 



no THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. HI. the Tees, the Danes throughout Alfred's day were 
The settling down on the conquered soil. Their first 
of the" settlement was in Deira, in the area occupied by the 
Danelaw, pj-gsent Yorkshire. Though their victory at York 
858-878. had left this district in their hands as early as the 
spring of 868, they contented themselves for the 
next seven years with the exaction of tribute from 
an under- king, Ecgberht, whom they set over it, 
while they mastered East Anglia and crushed Mid- 
Britain and made their first onset on Wessex. But 
in 875, while Guthrum prepared to renew the attack 
on i^lfred, Halfdene, with a portion of the Danish 
army at Repton, marched northward into Northum- 
, bria. It is possible that he was drawn there by a 
rising of the country, in which Ecgberht had been 
driven from the throne and Ricsig set as under-king 
in his place ; but if so, the death of Ricsig marks 
the close of this rising, and Halfdene marched un- 
opposed to the Tyne. From his winter-camp there 
he " subdued the land and ofttimes spoiled the Picts 
and the Strathclyde Wealhs.'" With the spring of 
876, however, while Guthrum and v^lfred were busy 
with the siege of Wareham, he fell back from Ber- 
nicia to the south, and "parted" among his men 
"the lands of Northumbria. Thenceforth," adds 
the chronicler, " they went on ploughing and till- 
ing them."' That this "deal" or division of the 
land did not, in spite of Halfdene's conquests on 
the Tyne, extend to Bernicia, we know from the 
fact that hardly a trace of Danish settlement can 
be found north of the Tees.' But the names of the 

' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 875. * Ibid. 876. 

^ Taylor, Words and Places, p. 112. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. m 

towns and villages of Deira show us in how sys- chap. m. 
tematic a way southern Northumbria was parted The 
among its conquerors. The change seems to have of th? 
been much the same as that which followed the con- ^^neiaw. 
quest of the Normans. The English population 858-878. 
was not displaced, but the lordship of the soil was 
transferred to the conqueror. The settlers formed 
a new aristocracy, while the older nobles fell to a 
lower position ; for throughout Deira the life of an 
English thegn was priced at but half the value of 
the life of a northern " hold." 

Some of the new settlements can be easily traced Their set- 

•' . tlements. 

through the termination " by," a Scandinavian equiv- 
alent for the English " tun " or " ham," while others 
may be less certainly distinguished by their endings 
in " thwaite " or " dale ;" and in each of the Ridings 
of Yorkshire we still find at least a hundred local 
names of this Danish type. Where they cluster 
most thickly is in the dales that break the wild 
tract of moorland along the coast from Whitby to 
the Tees valley, to which the new-comers gave the 
name of Cliff-land or Cleveland. Around Whitby 
itself, the " White-by " of the northern settlers, the 
little town that rose on either side its river-mouth, 
beneath the height on which the ruins of Streone- 
shealh, the home of Hild and Cadmon, stood black- 
ened and desolate, the country is thickly dotted 
with northern names. Memories of the pirate faith, 
of Balder and of Thor, meet us in Baldersby' or 
Thornaby as in the lost name of Presteby or Priest's 
town ; other hamlets give us the names of the war- 
riors themselves as they turned to " plough and till," 

' Now Baldby Fields. 



112 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. Beorn and Ailward, Grim and Aswulf, Orm and Tol, 
The Thorald and 3wein.' A few names of far greater 
of tS^ interest hint how race distinctions still perpetuated 
Danelaw, themselvcs in the group of little townships. Three 
858-878. Englebys or Inglebys and two Normanbys tell how 
here and there lords of the old Engle race still 
remained on a level with the conquerors, or how 
Northmen or Norwegians who had joined in the 
fighting had their share in the spoil.' At the other 
extremity of this district, in the valley of the Tees, 
a curious coincidence almost enables us to detect 
the spot from which the settlers came. On the 
coast of South Jutland we find two towns in close 
neighborhood, Middleburg and Aarhus ; while in 
the Tees valley Middlesborough is as closely neigh- 
bored by its " Aarhus-um " or Airsome. It is hard- 
ly possible not to believe that the great iron-mart 
of Cleveland must look for its mother-city to the 
little Jutish township, as the Boston of the New 
World looks for its mother-city to the Boston of 
the Old.^ 
Their Cleveland remained for centuries to come a thor- 
" ' oughly Scandinavian district; of its twenty -seven 
lords in Domesday, twenty-three still bore distinc- 
tively Danish names, and names of a like character 

^ Barnby, Ellerby, Grimsby, Aislaby (Asulvesbi), Ormsby, Tolesby, 
Swainby, Thoraldby. 

"^ Atkinson, Glossary of Cleveland Dialect, Introd. p. xiv. etc. Even 
the judicial institutions of the settlers survive in "Thingwall," 
a spot by Whitby, which has vanished from the modern map, but 
whose name Mr. Atkinson discovers in a Memorial of Benefac- 
tions to Whitby Abbey as "Thingvala.''' 

^ Atkinson, Cleveland Dialect, Introd. p. xiii. note. The South 
Jutland " Hjardum " probably finds a like successor in the Cleve- 
land " Yarm " or " Yarum." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. u^ 

seem at a yet later time to have prevailed even chap, m. 
among its serfs/ What drew settlers so thickly The 
there was, no doubt, the neighborhood of the sea; ofth? 
as ease of access from the sea drew them to the °^"^^^^- 
valley of the Ouse. The swift tide up the Humber, 858-878. 
the " Hiera " as it came to be called from the sea- 
god CEgir, carried the northern boats past the 
marshes of Holderness to the trading -port, the 
" Caupmanna - thorpe " or Cheapman's Thorpe, es- 
tablished by the new-comers to the south of York." 
Like all men of the north, the pirates were as keen 
traders as they were hard fighters ; ' their very kings 
were traffickers. Biorn, Harald Fair-hair's son, was 
" Biorn the Merchant," and St. Olaf was a partner in 
the trade ventures of his Jarls. The main end of 
their raids was to gather slaves for the slave-mart;' 

' ' Atkinson, Cleveland Dialect, Introd. pp. xx., xxi. 

^ Taylor, Words and Places, p. 254. " Caupmansthorpe near York. 
. . . The form of the word shows us that here the Danish traders re- 
sided, just as those of Saxon blood dwelt together at Chapmans- 
lade." 

^ Skiringsal in the Wik was now the centre of northern trade. 
" The Sleswig ships brought to it German, Wendish, Prussian, Rus- 
sian, Greek, and Eastern wares, as well as merchants and adventur- 
ers from these lands. In Skiringsal, indeed, the Halgolander might 
be seen driving bargains with the Prussian, the Trondheimer with 
the Saxon and the Wend, the Sondmoringer with the Dane and the 
Swede ; beside the walrus-skins and furs from the north, one might 
see amber from Prussia, costly stuffs from Greece and the East, By- 
zantine and Arabian coins and northern rings, while the harbor lay 
full of big and little ships of varied build, among which the kingly 
long-ship was distinguished not only by its size, but by its magnifi- 
cence." — Munch, Det Norske Folks Historic (Germ, trans.), pt. iv. 
p. 141. 

* We see the actual working of this slave-trade in Olaf Trygvas- 
son's story. He was captured in his childhood, "with his mother, 
Astrid, and his foster-father, Thorolf, by an Esthonian wiking, as 
they were crossing the sea from Sweden on their way to Novgorod, 



114 ^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. Ill, but they brought with them the furs, oils, skins, and 

The eider-down of their northern lands to barter for the 

of tiuf wares of the south. Their settlements along the 

Danelaw, ^ortli coast were as much markets as pirate-holds; 

858-878. and York, which from this time became more and 
more a Danish city, was thronged at the close of a 
century with Danish merchants, and had become 
the centre of a thriving trade with the north. The 
new-comers have left their mark in some of its local 
names : the street leading to its eastern outlet is 
still Guthrum's Gate ; and the church of St. Olave 
reminds us how, at the eve of the Norman Conquest, 
the Danish population had spread to the suburbs of 
the town. 

Their or- Qvcr the Central vale, from York to Catterick, we 

gamzatioii. 

find the " byes " planted, as was naturally the case, 
pretty thickly, with a " Balderby " among them that 
suggests how the northern myths were settling on 
Eno^lish soil with the northern marauders: and if 
the eastern wolds present few traces of their homes, 
they are frequent along the western moors. Of the 
life or institutions, however, of these settlers we 
know little ; for, from the moment of their settle- 
ment to the conquest of the Norman, northern Eng- 
land is for two hundred years all but hidden from 



and were divided among the crew and sold. An Esthonian called 
Klerkon got Olaf and Thorolf for his share of the booty, but Astrid 
was separated from her son Olaf, then only three years old. Kler- 
kon thought Thorolf too old for a slave, and that no work could be 
got out of him to repay his food, and therefore killed him, but sold 
the boy to a man called Klserk for a goat. A peasant called Reas 
bought him from Klserk for a good cloak, and he remained in 
slavery till he was recognized by his uncle." — Laing, Sea Kings of 
Norway, Introd. i. 96, 




THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, nc 

our view. The division of Deira into three Tri- chap, m. 
things, or Ridings, which probably dates from this The 
time, may answer in some degree to older divisions ; of tiie^ 
the East Riding, or district of the wolds, to an ear- ^^^w. 
lier Deira of the English conquerors, which seems 858-878. 
in later times to have retained some sort of exist- 
ence as an under-kingdom, while the bounds of the 
West Riding roughly correspond with those of El- 
met, as Eadwine added it to his Northumbrian 
realm. But the arrangement by which the Tri- 
things were linked together, the adjustment of their 
boundaries so that all three met in York itself, had 
clearly a distinct political end, and marks a time — 
such as that of the Danish kings — in which York 
was the seat and capital of the central power. The 
division of the Trithings into Wapentakes, which 
answer here to the Hundreds of the south, is prob- 
ably of the same date. In England, as in Iceland, 
the word may have been originally used for the 
closing of the district-court, when the suitors again 
took up the weapons they had laid aside at its open- 
ing, and have finally extended to the district itself.' 
The change of the English name "moot" for the 
gathering of the freemen in township, or wapentake 
into the Scandinavian " thing," or " ting" — a change 
recorded, as we have seen, by local designations — is 
no less significant of the social revolution which 
passed over the north with the coming of the Dane. 

The year after Half dene's partingr of Deira amons: The Dams 
his followers saw another portion of the Danish host Britain. 
settle in Mid-Britain. While yElfred was still in 
the midst of his struggle with the Danes about Ex- 

' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 109. 



Il6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. Ill, eter, "in the harvest-tide of S'jj, the Here went into 
The Mercia, and some of it they parted, and some they 
of th? handed over to Ceolwulf," who, till now% had served 
Danelaw, ^g their under-king for the whole.' The portion 
858-878. they took for themselves is, for the most part, 
marked by the presence in it of their Danish names. 
" Byes" extend to the very borders of Lincolnshire, 
Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rut- 
land, and Northamptonshire, while from the rest of 
Mercia they are almost wholly absent." It was this 
western half of the older kingdom, our Cheshire, 
Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Glouces- 
tershire, Herefordshire, and Oxfordshire, which re- 
mained under Ceolwulf's rule,' and to which from 
this time the name of Mercia is confined, while the 
eastern or Danish half was known, at any rate in 
later days, as the district of the Five Boroughs," 
Derby, whose name superseded the older English 
" Northweorthig," Leicester, Lincoln, Stamford, and 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 2)77. For Ceolwulf, see ib. a. 874. 
" That same year they gave the Mercian kingdom to the keeping 
of Ceolwulf, an unwise thegn of the king" (Burhred, who had fied 
to die at Rome), " and he swore oaths to them, and delivered host- 
ages to them that it should be ready for them on whatever day they 
would have it, and that he would be ready both in his own person 
and with all who would follow him for the behoof of the army." 

^ The country about Buckingham, however, which formed the 
southern boundary of the " Five Boroughs," has no " byes." Those 
about Wirral in Cheshire are an exception which I shall have to 
notice later on. We find, too, " byes " extending some few miles 
into our Warwickshire. I shall afterwards explain why I set aside 
the notion of Watling Street being the boundary of Danish Mercia. 

^ In 896 we find three ealdormen among the Witan of this part 
of Mercia. — Cod. Dip. No. 1073. The number in the undivided 
Mercian realm seems to have been five. 

* The name first occurs in the Song of Eadmund, Eng. Chron. 
(Winch.), a. 941. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jj^ 

Nottingham. Politically this State differed widely chap. m. 
from Danish Northumbria. While Northumbria The 
was an organized kingdom under the stock of In- of tSf 
guar or Ivar, with a definite centre at York and a ^^neiaw. 
general administrative division into Trithings and 858-878. 
Wapentakes, the independence of the Five Bor- 
oughs was unfettered by any semblance of kingly 
rule. Their name suggests some sort of confeder- 
acy ; and it is possible that a common " Thing" may 
have existed for the whole district ; but each of the 
Boroughs seems to have had its own Jarl, and Here 
or army, while (if we may judge from the instance of 
Lincoln and Stamford) the internal rule of each was 
in the hands of twelve hereditary " law-men." There 
was a like difference in local organization. In the 
country about Lincoln we find both Trithings and 
Wapentakes, as on the other side the Humber, but 
there is no trace of the Trithing in the territory of 
the four other Boroughs. The distribution of set- 
tlers over this midland Danelaw was as varied as 
their forms of rule. They lay thickest in the Lind- 
sey uplands, where the lands seem to have been 
treated throughout as conquered country, and to 
have been parted among the conquerors by the rude 
rope - measurement of the time. Lincolnshire, in- 
deed, contains as many names of northern settle- 
ments as the whole of Yorkshire ;' and its little port 
of Grimsby, whose muddy shores were thronged 
with traders from Norway and the Orkneys, came 
at last to rival York in commercial activity ."^ In 

' Isaac Taylor, Words and Places, p. 122, numbers some three 
hundred, 
* " When Kali was fifteen winters old he went with some mer- 



Il8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. III. the districts of the other four towns the names of 

The such settlements are far less numerous ; it is only 

of th? in Leicestershire, indeed, that we find anything like 

Danelaw, ^j^g settlements of the north.' 

858-878. In East Anglia the northern colonization was of 

The Danes -bl yct wcakcr sort than in Mid-Britain. Although 
"IngUa. this district had been in Danish hands since the 
fall of Eadmund in ^^o, its real settlement dated 
ten years later, when Guthrum led back his army 
from Wessex after the Frith or Peace of Wedmore. 
In ^^o "the army went from Cirencester to East 
Anglia, and settled the land, and parted it among 
them."' Guthrum's realm, however, included far 
more than East Anglia itself. The after-war of 
886 and the frith that followed it show that Essex 
was detached from the Eastern or Kentish king- 
dom, to which it had belonged since Ecgberht's day, 
and brought back to its old dependence on East 
Anglia. With Essex passed its chief city, London, 
now wasted by pillage and fires, but soon to regain 
its trading activity in Danish hands, and whose 

chants to England, taking with him a good cargo of merchandise. 
They went to a trading-place called Grimsby. There was a great 
number of people from Norway, as well as from the Orkneys, Scot- 
land, and the Sudreyar. . . . Then he, Kali, made a stanza — 

" Unpleasantly we have been wading 
In the mud a weary five weeks ; 
Dirt, indeed, we had in plenty 
W^hile we lay in Grimsby harbor." 

Anderson, Orkneyinga Saga, pp. 75-76. 

This, however, was in the twelfth century. 

' In Leicestershire Taylor finds one hundred such names, in 
Northampton and Notts fifty each, in Derby about a dozen. — Words 
and Places, p. 122. 

'' Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 880. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



119 



subject territory carried Guthrum's rule along the chap, m. 
valley of the Thames as far as the Chilterns and The 
the district attached to Oxford, which now became oniuf 
a border-town of English Mercia. To the north, i^aneiaw. 
too, Guthrum seems to have wielded the old East- 858-878. 
Anglian supremacy over the southern districts of 
the Fen. In extent, therefore, his kingdom was fully 
equal to either of the two rival States of the Dane- 
law. But its character was far less northern. The 
bulk of the warrior-settlers may have already found 
homes on the Ouse or the Trent ; it is certain, at 
any rate, that in East Anglia their settlements were 
few. The " byes " of Norfolk and Suffolk lie clus- 
tered for the most part round the mouth of the 
Yare; and this was probably the one part of this 
district where distinct pirate communities existed ; 
throughout the rest of it the Danes must simply 
have quartered themselves on their English sub- 
jects. In the dependent districts to north and south 
they seem rather to have clustered in town-centres, 
such as Colchester and Bedford, or Huntingdon 
and Cambridge, where Jarl and Here remained 
encamped, receiving food and rent from the sub- 
ject Englishmen who tilled their allotted lands.' 

The small number of its settlers, however, was The East- 
not the only circumstance which distinguished East Kingdom. 
Anglia from the rest of the Danelaw. Its local in- 
stitutions remained English, while it was far more 
closely connected with the English kingdom than 
its fellow States. We find no trace of Trithing or 
Wapentake within its bounds. It was from the first, 

* Robertson, Scotland under Early Kings, vol. ii., Appendix, 
" The Danelagh," 



I20 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iii. too, a Christian kingdom. A promise to receive 

The baptism was part of the terms of surrender on Guth- 

of tiuf rum's side after his defeat at Edington; and "about 

Danelaw, ^hrge weeks after King Guthrum came to Alfred 

858-878. ... at Aire, near Athelney, and the king was his 

godfather in baptism, and his chrism-loosing' was at 

Wedmore; and he was twelve days with the king, 

and he greatly honored him and his companions 

with gifts.'" The pohcy of binding to him, as far 

as he could, this portion of the Danelaw was carried 

on by Alfred in the later frith made between the 

two kings with " the witan of all the English-folk " 

" and all the people that are in East Anglia," which, 

after marking the boundaries of the two realms, fixed 

the " wer" or life-value of both Englishman and Dane 

at the same amount,' settled the same procedure for 

claims to property, and pledged either party to refuse 

to receive deserters from the army or dominions of 

the other.* 

^law^and' ^^°"^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ thc brink of the Thames valley, 
theNorih.ii-om the water-parting of the country to the German 
Sea, every inch of territory lay in Danish hands. 
The Danelaw was, in fact, by far the most important 
conquest which the northern warriors had made. In 
extent, as in wealth and resources, it equalled, indeed, 
or more than equalled, the Scandinavian realms them- 

^ Probably the loosing of the fillet bound round the head at con- 
firmation after the anointing of the brow with the chrism. 

"" Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 878. 

^ " If a man be slain we estimate all equally dear, English and 
Danish." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 155, 156. 

* " All ordained when the oaths were sworn that neither bond 
nor free might go to the host without leave, no more than any of 
them to us." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 156, 157. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 12 1 

selves. To bring this great possession under their chap. m. 
overlordship became, we cannot doubt, the dream The 
of the kings who were beginning to build up the ^f^lTe^ 
petty realms about them into the monarchies of the °^"^^^^- 
North ; and it is possible that we find the earliest 858-878. 
trace of that ambition which afterwards broueht 
Swein and Harald Hardrada to the shores of Britain 
in a tale which, oddly as it has been disguised, may, 
in its earlier form, be taken as a fair record of the 
relations between the northern homeland and its 
outlier in the south. " At this time," says the Saga 
of Harald Fair-hair,' " a king called ^thelstan had 
taken the kingdom of England." Chronological 
difficulties hinder us from seeing in this ^^thelstan 
the later king of Wessex, and guide us to Guthrum, 
of East Anglia, who had taken the name of ^thelstan 
at his baptism," or to his son and successor who may 
have borne the same double name. Whichever of 
these kings it was, " he sent men to Norway to King 
Harald with this errand, that the messengers should 
present him with a sword, with hilt and handle gilt, 
and also its whole sheath adorned with gold and 
silver and set with precious jewels. The ambassa- 
dors presented the sword-hilt to the king, saying, 
' Here is a sword which King vEthelstan sends 
thee, with the request that thou wilt accept it' The 
king took the sword by the handle ; whereupon the 
ambassadors said, ' Now thou hast taken the sword 
according to our king's desire, and therefore art thou 
his subject, as thou hast taken his sword.' King 
Harald saw now that this was a jest, for he would 
be subject to no man. But he remembered it was 

^ Laing, Sea Kings of Norway, i. 308. 
^ .^thelweard, a. 889, lib. iv. c. 3. 



122 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ni. his rule, whenever anything raised his anger, to col- 

The lect himself and let his passion run off, and then 

onhe^ take the matter into consideration coolly. Now he 

Danelaw. ^[^ gQ^ ^j^^^ consulted his friends, who all gave him 

858-878. the advice to let the ambassadors, in the first place, 

go home in safety. 

" The following summer King Harald sent a ship 
westward to England, and gave the command of it 
to Hauk Haabrok. He was a great warrior, and 
very dear to the king. Into his hands he gave his 
son Hakon. Hauk proceeded westward to Eng- 
land, and found the king in London, where there 
was just at the time a great feast and entertainment. 
When they came to the hall Hauk told his men how 
they should conduct themselves ; namely, how he 
who went first in should go last out, and all should 
stand in a row at the table, at equal distance from 
each other ; and each should have his sword at his 
left side, but should fasten his cloak so that his 
sword should not be seen. Then they went into the 
hall, thirty in number. Hauk went up to the king 
and saluted him, and the king bade him welcome. 
Then Hauk took the child Hakon and set it on the 
king's knee. The king looks at the boy, and asks 
Hauk what the meaning of this is. Hauk replies, 
' Harald the king bids thee foster his servant-girl's 
child.' The king was in great anger, and seized a 
sword, which lay beside him, and drew it, as if he 
were going to kill the child. Hauk says, ' Thou hast 
borne him on thy knee, and thou canst murder him 
if thou wilt; but thou wilt not make an end of all 
King Harald's sons by so doing.' On that Hauk 
went out with all his men, and took the way direct 
to his ship and put to sea — for they were ready — 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 123 

and came back to King Harald. The king was chap. m.. 
highly pleased with this ; for it is the common ob- The 
servation of all people that the man who fosters ^?^5i? 
another's children is of less consideration than ^a^^^- 
the other. From these transactions between the ^5 8-87 8. 
two kings it appears that each wanted to be held 
greater than the other ; but, in truth, there was no 
injury to the dignity of either, for each was the 
upper king in his own kingdom till his dying day." 

But whatever may have been the relation of the ^'''^ ^^''^- 
Danelaw to the bcandmavian homeland, there can England. 
be no doubt of the importance of this great settle- 
ment, viewed in its relation to the country beyond 
its borders. It was a first step towards the conquest 
of England. The hard fighting of Wessex, the genius 
of y^lfred, had for the moment checked the con- 
queror's advance. But what he had won was never 
lost. Small as were the differences of manners and 
institutions between Englishman and Dane, the 
Danelaw preserved an individuality and character 
which even the re-conquest by the West -Saxon 
kings failed to take from it. If it submitted for a 
while to English rule it remained a Danish and 
not an English land ; and when the final attack of 
the Danish kings fell on England, the rising of the 
Danelaw, in Swein's aid, showed that half his work 
was done already to his hand. From the landing of 
Ivar to the landing of Cnut the attack of the Dane 
on Britain is really a continuous one ; but the heri- 
tage of their victory was to pass into the hands of a 
later conqueror, and the bowing of all England to a 
Norman king is only the close of a work which be- 
gan in the parting of Northern and Central England 
among the Danish holds. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ALFRED. 
878-901. 

The tvmk- Masters as they were of the bulk of Britain, the 

}iess of the ■' , 

Danelaw, pressure of the Danes on the England that resisted 
them must in the end have proved irresistible had 
their military force remained undiminished and had 
their political faculty been as great as their genius 
for war. As we have seen, however, they showed 
as few traces of political faculty or of any power of 
national organization as in their own Scandinavia, 
while the number of their fighting men was lessen- 
ing every day. Already the conquest of northern 
Britain had done much to save the south ; for the 
attack of Guthrum on Wessex might have proved 
as successful as the attack of Ivar on Northumbria, 
had Ivar's men remained in the ranks of the Danish 
host instead of settling down as farmers beside the 
Ouse or the Trent. Peace, too, and the Christian- 
ity which Guthrum embraced, yet further thinned 
the Danish ranks ; and at the close of the last cam- 
paign against Wessex a large part of the invaders 
followed Hasting to seek better fortune in Gaul. 
But even those who remained on English ground 
clung loosely to their new settlements. It was not 
Britain but Iceland that drew to it at this time the 
hearts of the northern rovers ; and the English 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 125 

Danelaw often served as a mere stepping-stone c^ap. iv. 
between Norway and its offshoot in the northern iEifred. 
seas. Of the names of the orioinal settlers of 878 



-901. 

Iceland which are recorded in the Landnama, its 
Domesday book, more than a half are those of 
men who had found an earlier settlement in the 
British Isles.' 

At the moment we have reached, however, even ^ifred^'s 

%vork of 

y^lfred's eye could hardly have discerned the ^^-bX^- restoration. 
ness of the Danelaw. It was with little of a con- 
queror's exultation that the young king turned from 
his victories in the west. He looked on the peace 
he had won as a mere break in the struggle, and as 
a break that might at any moment come suddenly 
to an end. Even in the years of tranquillity which 
followed it there never was an hour when he felt 
safe against an inroad of the Danes over Watling 
Street, or a landing of pirates in the Severn. " Oh, 
what a happy man was he !" he cries once, " that 
man that had a naked sword hanging over his head 
from a single thread — so as to me it always did!'"" 
And yet peace was absolutely needful for the work 
that lay before him. If the deliverance of Wessex 
had shown the exhaustion of the Danes, Wessex 
itself was as utterly spent by fifty years of contin- 
uous effort, and above all by the last five years of 

^ Dasent, translation of Njal's Saga, Introd. p. xii. The most trust- 
worthy accounts, such as that of the Landnamabok, of the first 
settlements in Iceland show how mixed the population of the 
British Islands then was. Besides the overwhelming numbers of 
the Northmen, there are found men and women of Danish, Swed- 
ish, and Flemish descent who joined in the emigration from Brit- 
ain to Iceland.— (A. S. G.) 

^ Alfred's Boethius, in Sharon Turner's Hist, Anglo-Sax. ii. 45. 



126 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARiv. deadly struggle. Law, order, the machinery of 
iEifred. justice and government, had been weakened by 
878-901. the pirate storm. Schools and monasteries had for 
the most part perished. Many of the towns and 
villages lay wrecked or in ruin. There were whole 
tracts of country that lay wasted and without in- 
habitants after the Danish raids. Material and 
moral civilization indeed had alike to be revived. 
All, however, might be set right, as the king touch- 
ingly said, " if we have stillness ;" ^ and in these first 
years of peace the work of restoration went rapidly 
on. .Alfred had to wrestle indeed with the penu- 
ry of the royal Hoard ; for so utterly had it been 
drained by the payments to the pirates and the 
cost of the recent struggle that the sons of yEthel- 
wulf had been driven to the miserable expedient of 
debasing the currency, and it was not till Alfred's 
later days that the coinage could be raised to a 
sounder standard.^ He had to wrestle, too, yet 
harder with the sluggishness of his subjects. There 
were scarcely any who would undertake the slight- 
est voluntary labor for the common benefit of the 
realm ; persuasion had, after long endurance, to pass 
into command ; and even commands were slowly 
and imperfectly carried out.' Great, however, as 
were the obstacles, the work was done. Forts were 
built in places specially exposed to attack," and 
wasted lands were colonized afresh. Bishop Dene- 
wulf, of Winchester, tells us how his land at Bed- 
hampton, " when my lord first let it to me, was 

* Pref. to Pastoral Book (ed. Sweet). 

^ Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. 64. 

' Asser (ed. Wise), p. 59. ■• Ibid. p. 58. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



127 



unprovided with cattle, and laid waste by heathen chap. iv. 
folk ; and I myself then provided the cattle, and mtreA. 
there people were afterwards." ' So, too, new ab- sts^oi. 
beys were founded at Winchester and Shaftesbury ; 
while the king's gratitude for his deliverance raised 
a religious house among the marshes of Athelney. 

Busy, however, as ^E If red was with the vestora,-^^'^"'^'^'^^- 
tion of order and good government, his main efforts 
were directed to the military organization of his 
people.' He had learned, during the years of hard 
fighting with which his life~ began, how unsuited 
the military system of the country had become to 
the needs of war as the Danes practised it. The 
one national army was the fyrd, a force which had 
already received in the Karolingian legislation the 
name of " landwehr," by which the German knows 
it still. The fyrd was, in fact, composed of the 
whole mass of free land-owners who formed the 
folk : and to the last it could only be summoned by 
the voice of the folk-moot. In theory, therefore, 
such a host represented the whole available force 
of the country. But in actual warfare its attend- 
ance at the king's w^ar-call was limited by practical 
diificulties. Arms were costly, and the greater 
part of the fyrd came equipped with bludgeons and 
hedge -stakes, which could do little to meet the 
spear and battle-axe of the invader. The very 
growth of the kingdom, too, had broken down the 
old military system. A levy of every freeman was 

' Thorpe, Diplomatarium, p. 162. 

^ Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 220 et seq.) has examined this subject; 
but we have Uttle real information about it from contemporary- 
documents. 



128 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. possible when one folk warred with another folk, 
iEifred. when a single march took the warrior to the border, 
878-901. and a single fight settled the matter between the 
tiny peoples. But now that folk after folk had been 
absorbed in great kingdoms, now that the short 
march had lengthened into distant expeditions, the 
short fight into long campaigns, it was hard to rec- 
oncile the needs of labor and of daily bread with 
the needs of war. Ready as he might be to follow 
the king to a fight which ended the matter, the 
farmer who tilled his own farm could serve only as 
long as his home-needs would suffer him. Custom 
had fixed his service at a period of two months. 
But as the industrial condition of the country ad- 
vanced, such a service became more and more diffi- 
cult to enforce ; even in Ine's day it was needful to 
fix heavy fines by law for men w^ho " neglected the 
fyrd,'" and it broke down before the new conditions 
of warfare brought about by the strife with the 
Danes. However thoroughly they were beaten, the 
Danes had only to fall back behind their intrench- 
ments, and wait in patience till the two months of 
the host's service were over, and the force which 
besieged them melted away. It was this which had 
again and again neutralized the successes of the 
West-Saxon kings. It was the thinning of their 
own ranks in the hour of victory which forced 
^thelred to conventions such as that of Notting- 
ham, and Alfred to conventions such as that of 
Exeter. The Dane, in fact, had changed the whole 
conditions of existing warfare. His forces were 

* Ine's Law; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 134, 135. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 129 

really standing armies, and a standing army of some chap, iv. 
sort was needed to meet them. MUieA. 

It was to provide such a force that the kings, 878-90i. 
from Alfred to ./Ethelstan, gave a new extension yy^^~^^^^^. 
to the class of thegns.' The growth of this class '^^^•^•^• 
had formed, as we have seen, a marked part of the 
social revolution which had preceded the Danish 
wars. But a fresh importance had been given to 
the thegn by the shock which the structure of so- 
ciety had received from the long struggle. The 
free ceorl had above all felt the stress of war; in 
his need of a protector he was beginning to waive 
freedom for safety, and to " commend " himself to 
a thegn who would fight for him on condition that 
he followed his new " lord " as his " man " to the 
field. On the other hand the lands wasted by the 
Danes were repeopled for the most part by the 
rural nobles, who provided the settlers with cattle 
and implements of culture, and in turn received 
service from them.' So rapid was this process that 
the class of free ceorls seems to have become all 
but extinguished, while that of thegns, in its various 
degrees — king's thegn, the " baron " of the later feu- 
dalism ; middle thegn, a predecessor of the country 
knight; and lesser thegn, or all who possessed 
"soke," or private jurisdiction within their lands' — 
came to include the bulk of the land-owners. The 
warlike temper of the thegnhood, its military tra- 
ditions, its dependence on the king at whose sum- 

' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 220 et seq. 

^ Cod. Dip. 1089. See Robertson's remarks, Hist. Essays, Introd. 
p. liv., note. 
= Cnut's Laws, sec. 72 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 415. 

9 



I^o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. mons it was bound to appear in the host, above all, 

.ffiifred. its wealth enabled it to bring to the field a force 

878-901. well equipped and provided with resources for a 

campaign ; and it was with a sound instinct that 

Alfred and his house seized on it as the nucleus 

of a new military system. 

The new j^g sDCcial rccosfnition, as a leadino^ element in 

army, \ . . 

our social organization, belongs most probably to 
his days or to those of his son ; and a law which 
we may look upon as part, at least, of the king's 
reforms gave the class of thegns at once a wide 
military extension by subjecting all owners of five 
hides of land to thegn service/ By a development 
of the same principle which we find established in 
later times, but whose origin we may fairly look for 
here, the whole country was divided into military 
districts, eg,ch five hides sending an armed man at 
the king's summons, and providing him with vict- 
uals and pay. Each borough, too, was rated as one 
, or more such districts, and sent its due contingent, 
from one soldier to twelve. While this organiza- 
tion furnished the solid nucleus of a well-armed and 
permanent force, the duty of every freeman to join 
the host remained binding as before. But a simple 
reform met some, at least, of the difficulties which 
had as yet neutralized its effectiveness. On the 
resumption of the war we find that Alfred had re- 
organized this national force by dividing the fyrd 

' Thorpe, Anc. Laws and Inst. i. 191. " If a ceorl thrived so that 
he had fully five hides of his own land, church and kitchen, bell- 
house and ' burh '-gate-seat, and special duty in the king's hall, then 
was he thenceforth of thane-right worthy." Compare the North- 
peoples' Law, sees. 5 and 9, ibid, pp. 187, 189. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i^i 

into two halves, each of which took by turns its chap^iv. 
service in the field, while the other half was ex- Jiifred. 
empted from field-service on condition of defend- 878-90i. 
ing its own burhs and manning the rough intrench- 
ments round every township.' A garrison and re- 
serve force was thus added to the army on service ; 
and the attendance of its warriors in the field could 
be more rigorously enforced. 

Further than this it was impossible to go. But S^^f/j'^' 
the results of the new system were seen when the 
war broke out again in later years. The balance 
of warlike effectiveness passed from the invaders to 
the West Saxons. The fyrd became an army. In 
the skilful choice of positions, in the use of in- 
trenchments, in rapidity of marching, as well as in 
the shock of the battle-field, the Danes found them- 
selves face to face with men who had patiently 
learned to be their match. The reorganization of 
the fyrd, however, was only a part of the task of 
military reform which y^lfred set himself. Alone 
among the rulers of his time he saw that the battle 
with the pirates must really be fought out upon the 
sea. Clear them from the land as he might, safety 
was impossible while every inch of blue water which 
washed the English coast was the Northman's realm. 
But to win the sea was a harder task than to win 
back the land. yElfred had only to organize the 
national army; he had to create a national fleet. It 
was not, indeed, that Englishmen had ever lost their 
love for the sea ; fishers and coasters abounded from 
the first along the Northumbrian shore, and ports 
such as Yarmouth and London can hardly have de- 

' Eng. Chron. a. 894. 



1^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. pended for traffic on foreign shipping. That no 
.j:ifred. mention is made in earher times of a " ship-fyrd," or 

878^01. assessment for the equipment of a fleet, is due to 
the fact that the struggles of early England had as 
yet been land struggles within the bounds of the 
country itself ; but on the first outbreak of a foreign 
war — the war of Ecgfrith with Ireland — the Irish 
coast was ravaged by a fleet which must have been 
raised through a public contribution and manned by 
sailors accustomed to stormy seas.' In the south, 
indeed, no English navy seems to have existed dur- 
ing the earlier period of the northern attacks. The 
seizure of Wareham, however, spurred Alfred to 
create a fleet." He built larger ships than had as 
yet been used for warfare ; and though forced by 
the greater skill of the Northmen in sea matters to 
man his vessels with " pirates " from Friesland, their 
action did much to decide the fate of Exeter. This 
naval force was steadily developed.^ In Alfred's 
later years his fleet was strong enough to encounter 
the pirate-ships of the East Anglians ; and in the 
reign of his son an English force of a hundred ves- 
sels asserted its mastery of the Channel.' 
Alfred ^ A work of cvcu greater difficulty than the reor- 

^"j7iftke. '^ ganization of fyrd or fleet was the reorganization of 
public justice. Here Alfred's efforts again fell in 

' A. D. 684. Bada, H. E. lib. iv. c. 26.— (A.,S. G.) 

^ Asser, a. 877 (ed. Wise, p. 29) : " Jussit cymbas et galeas, id est, 
longas naves fabricari per regnum." 

" See Eng. Chron. a. 897. 

* We can hardly attribute to yElfred the law that we find in force 
in Eadgar's day, by which a ship was due from every three hun- 
dreds, probably of the coast-shires ; but some such law there must 
have been to account for Eadward's fleet. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 1^3 

with the silent revolution which was undoins: the chap. iv. 
older institutions of the English race. The change Alfred, 
in the character and conception of the kingship, g'ls^oi. 
which was being brought about by the consolidation 
of the peoples into a single monarchy, as well as by 
the new tie of personal allegiance which bound men 
to the "lord of the land," was bringing with it a cor- 
responding modification in the notions of justice 
and local government. The " peace of the folk " 
was becoming more and more, both in feeling and 
in fact, " the king's peace," ' while public justice was 
more and more conceived of as emanating from the 
power and action of the sovereign rather than as a 
right inherent in the community itself. That this 
change of sentiment was of far older date than Al- 
fred's time, we see from the language of the king. 
The conception of justice, as inherent in the local 
jurisdictions, or as flowing from the will of the peo- 
ple, has wholly vanished. In Alfred's mind justice 
flows to every court from the king himself, of whose 
judicial power each is representative, and who, as 
the fountain and source of justice, was bound on ap- 
peal to correct or confirm the judgment of all. " It 
is by gift from God and from me," he says to all who 
claim jurisdiction, " that you occupy your office and 
rank."' Not only did an appeal lie to him person- 
ally from every court, but we find him exercising 
this jurisdiction through delegated judges, in whose 
action we see the first traces of the judicial author- 
ity of the Royal Council. " All the law dooms of 

' See Stubbs, Const, Hist. i. 208-212. 

* " Dei dono et meo sapientium ministerium et gradus usurpas- 
tis," Asser (ed. Wise), p. 70. 



1^4 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. his land that were given in his absence he used to 
iEifred. keenly question, of whatever sort they were, just or 

878^01. unjust; and if he found any wrong-doing in them 
he would call the judges themselves before him, and 
either by his own mouth or by some other of his 
faithful men seek out why they gave doom so un- 
righteous, v/hether through ignorance or ill-will, or 
for love or from hate of any, or for greed of gold." ' 
The law was, in fact, now the king's law : offences 
against it are offences against the king, and con- 
tempt of its courts is contempt of the king.' 

^Jfredy This new conception of justice received a power- 
ful uTipulse from the growmg mefnciency of the 
" folk's justice " itself. Alfred's main work, like 
that of his successor, was to enforce submission to 
the justice of hundred-moot and shire-moot alike on 
noble and ceorl, "who were constantly at obstinate 
variance with one another in the folk-moots before 
ealdorman and reeve, so that hardly any one of them 
would grant that to be true doom that had been 
judged for doom by the ealdorman and reeves."' 

' Asser (ed. Wise), p. 70: "Nam omnia pene totius suae regionis 
judicia, quae in absentia sua fiebant, sagaciter investigabat, qualia 
fierent, justa aut etiam injusta ; aut vero si aliquam in illis judiciis 
iniquitatem intelligere posset, leniter ad vocatos illos ipsos judices, aut 
per se ipsum, aut per alios suos fideles quoslibet, interrogabat," etc. 

" " Ofer-hyrnesse ;" first heard of in LI. Eadw. L sec. i. (Thorpe, 
Anc. Laws, i. 161), and so dating from -Alfred's day 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 69. " NobiUum et ignobilium . . . qui 
ssepissime in concionibus comitum et praepositorum pertinacissime 
inter se dissentiebant, ita ut pene nullus eorum quicquid a comiti- 
bus et praepositis judicatum fuisset, verum esse concederet." As 
Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 112, note) points out, this shows "that eal- 
dorman and gerefa, eorl and ceorl, had their places in these courts," 
and that, " although the officers might declare the law, the ultimate 
determination rested in each case with the suitors." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



135 



But even the doom of the folk-moot was subject on chap^iv. 
appeal to the justice of the king." Judicial business, Jiifred. 
in fact, occupied a large part of Alfred's time. He 878-901. 
was busied, says his biographer, "day and night" in 
the correction of local injustice, "for in that whole 
kingdom the poor had no helpers, or few, save the 
king himself."' The work was one which brought 
with it bitter resistance, and the strife, even with 
men of his own house, for law and justice, left pain 
and disappointment in Alfred's heart. " Desirest 
thou power .?" he asks in one of his writings. " But 
thou shalt never obtain it without sorrow — sorrow 
from strange folk, and yet keener sorrows from thine 
own kindred."' " Hardship and sorrow!" he breaks 
out again ; " not a king but would wish to be with- 
out these if he could. But I know that he can- 
not."* 

Gloom or anxiety, however, failed, even for a mo- J^ng^i^J^ 
ment, to check his activity in the work of restora- 
tion.' He was as busy without Wessex as within. 

> Asser (ed. Wise), p. 70. " Ibid. p. 69. 

' Alfred's Boethius, in Sharon Turner's Hist. Anglo-Sax. ii. 43. 

* Ibid. p. 45. 

^ Later tradition (Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 186) at- 
tributed to JElfred the institution of the shire, the hundred, and 
the tithing; and Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 112) suggests a 
real ground for this. "The West-Saxon shires appear in history 
under their permanent names, and with a shire organization much 
earlier than those of Mercia and Northumberland ; while Kent, 
Essex, and East Anglia had throughout an organization derived 
from their old status as kingdoms. It is in Wessex, further, that 
the hundredal division is supplemented by that of the tithing. It 
may then be argued that the whole hundredal system radiates from 
the West-Saxon kingdom, and that the variations mark the grad- 
ual extension of that power as it won its way to supremacy under 
Egbert or Ethelwulf, or recovered territory from the Danes under 



126 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. In the division of Britain, at the Peace of Wedmore, 
jEifred. he had saved from the grasp of the Danes the west- 
878^01. ern portion of the Mercian kingdom, the upper val- 
leys of the Thames and the Trent, the whole valley 
of the Severn, with the outlier of the Hwiccan ter- 
ritory in Arden, and the more northerly region of 
our Shropshire and Cheshire. Of what vital im- 
portance this tract was to prove, we shall see in the 
after-part of our story. It was from it that Alfred 
drew the teachers who began the intellectual and 
religious restoration of the rescued realm. It was 
from it that his daughter, in later days, advanced to 
the conquest of Mid-Britain. It was of more im- 
mediate value as parting the Welshmen from the 
Danes, and thus paving the way for that complete 
reduction of the former, which w^as the necessary 
prelude to any effective struggle with the settlers of 
the Danelaw. But what immediately fronted the 
young king was the question of its government. 
The question was one of great moment, not only 
in its bearing on Mercia, but in its bearing on the 
future of England itself. The royal stocks, once 
the centres and representatives of the separate folks, 
were dying out one by one. In the earlier days of 
Ecgberht the only kings that retained political life 
were those of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, 
with the tributary realms of East Anglia and of 
Kent. Of these the Kentish kings soon came to an 
end, while the strife over the succession in North- 
Alfred and Edward, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred, and Edgar. If 
this be allowed, the claim of Alfred, as founder, not of the hundred- 
law, but of the hundredal divisions, may rest on something firmer 
than legend.'' 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



137 



umbria sprang from the virtual extinction of its chap, iv. 
royal stock. But the action of Ecgberht, even in .sifred. 
the moment of his triumph, showed that so long as 878-901. 
the royal races existed at all, any real union of the 
English peoples in one political body was practically 
impossible. 

The difficulty, indeed, could hardly have been ^^'S' 
solved save by some violent shock ; and the shock dormamy. 
was given by the coming of the Danes. Before 
fifty years were over, the royal houses of Northum- 
bria, of East Anglia, of Mercia, were brought to an 
end. The two claimants to the northern throne 
perished in the battle of York. The martyrdom of 
Eadmund closed the East-Anglian line, while that 
of Mercia ended in the flight of Burhred to Rome 
before the inroad of Guthrum. It was thus that 
the position of ^Ellfred differed radically from that 
of Ecgberht ; for even had he wished to restore the 
mere supremacy over Mercia which Ecgberht had 
wielded, he had no royal house through which to 
restore it. He was driven, in fact, by the very force 
of things, to be not merely a West-Saxon over-lord 
of Mercia, but a Mercian king. He made no attempt 
to fuse Mercia into Wessex ; it remained a separate, 
though dependent, State, with its Mercian witenage- 
mot and Mercian ruler, ^thelred, who may have 
sprung from the stock of its older kings. But 
y^thelred w^as simply Ealdorman of the Mercians. 
Though yElfred uses, in his dealings with Mercia, 
only the general title of " King," it was as King of 
the Mercians that he acted ; their Ealdorman owned 
him as his lord, and their Witan met by his license. 
How thoroughly y^lfred asserted royal rights in 



138 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iv. Mid-Britain may be seen, indeed, from his Mercian 
JEifred. coinage. Coinage, in the old world, was the un- 
878-901. questioned test of kingship, and a mint which Alfred 
set up at Oxford,' within the borders of the Mercian 
Ealdormanry, proves even more than the submissive 
words of Witan or Ealdorman the reality of his rule. 
In fact, Wessex and Mercia were now united, as 
Wessex and Kent had long been united, by their 
allegiance to the same ruler ; and the foundation of 
a national monarchy was laid in the personal loyalty 
of Jute and Engle and Saxon alike to the house of 
Cerdic." 

^ " We have in the British Museum," Mr. Barclay V. Head has 
been good enough to write to me, " a whole series of JElfred's coins, 
struck at various mints, and among them are some discovered some 
twenty or thirty years ago at Cuerdale, which read 'ORSNA- 
FORDA.' It is usual to attribute these to Oxford." On a subse- 
quent personal examination, however, he finds that the word has 
been misread, and is clearly " OKSNAFORDA," which must be 
taken as the earliest authentic form of the town's name. No writ- 
ten evidence for Oxford's existence can be found before its mention 
in the Chronicle in 912 in the following reign. 

= We find ^thelred an Ealdorman under Burhred, c. 872-874 
(Kemb., Cod. Dip. 304). His first extant charter under Alfred is 
of 880, as "dux et patricius gentis Merciorum," and already married 
to ^thelflsed, who signs it. In 884 he signs as " Merciorum gentis 
ducatum gubernans " (Cod. Dip. 1066); in 888 as "procurator in 
dominio regni Merciorum" (ib. 1068). The grant of 880 is "cum 
licentia et impositione manus ^Ifredi regis, una cum testimonio et 
consensu seniorum ejusdem gentis (Merciorum)." "Alfred rex" 
signs first, then "^thered dux," then "^thelflEed conjunx" (Cod. 
Dip. 311). Another grant in 883 is with .Alfred's "leave and wit- 
ness" (ib. 313). And so, in 896, when ^thelred summons the 
Mercian Witan, "that did he with King Alfred's witness and 
leave" (ib. 1073). In a charter, however, of 901 (Cod. Dip. 330), 
Alfred's last year of reign, there is no mention of Alfred, but 
of "^thered ^d(elflaedque) del gratia monarchiam Merciorum 
tenentes honorificeque gubernantes et defendentes ;" the grant is 
made solely " cum licentia et testimonio pantorum procerum Mer- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jog 

Important as was the union of Wessex and Mer- chap. iv. 
cia in itself as a step towards national unity, it led .ffiifred. 
to a step yet more important in the fusion of the 878-80i. 
customary codes of the English peoples into a com- ^^^^^ 
mon law. The sphere of the written codes might '''"^•^■ 
be narrow in relation to the whole body of custom- 
ary law, but they had by y^lfred's day come to be 
regarded as its representatives, and thus to be spe- 
cially representative of the tribal life which the cus- 
tomary law embodied. As king, therefore, of Wes- 
sex, of Kent, and of Mercia, ^E^lfred found himself 
an administrator of three separate codes, whose 
differences, however slight, reflected the distinctions 
which held each of these States apart from the 
other. Of a new legislation, or of the bringing a 
larger sphere of English life within the scope of the 
written law, the king had no thought. The very 
notion of new legislation, indeed, ungrounded on 
custom, was without hold on him or his people. " I 
durst not," he says, frankly, " venture to set down in 
writing much of my own, for it was unknown to me 
what of it would please those who should come after 
us." All that he could venture on was a certain 
amount of rejection; "many of those dooms which 
seemed to me not good I rejected them by the 
counsel of my witan ;" but the main work was sim- 

ciorum ;" and signed " Ego ^thered. Ego ^thelflaed," without 
titles. This does not, however, represent a new position taken by 
.^thelred at Alfred's death and Eadward's accession, though it is 
notable that ^thelweard, a. 894 (lib. iv. c. 3), calls him " rex," for in 
903 we find a Mercian ealdornian asking a grant from " Eadwardum 
regem, yEthelredum quoque et .^thelfledam, qui tunc principatum 
et potestatem gentis Merciae sub praedicto rege tenuerunt" (Cod. 
Dip. 1081). 



I^o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. ply a work of compilation.' " Those things which I 
Jiifred. met with, either of the days of Ine, my kinsman, or 

878^901. of 0£fa, king of the Mercians, or of y^thelberht, 
who first among the EngHsh race received baptism, 
those which seemed to me the rightest, those I 
have gathered together and rejected the others.'"" 
But unpretending as the work might seem, its im- 
portance was great. With it began the conception 
of a national law. The notion of separate systems 
of tribal customs passed away with the weakening 
of the notion of tribal Hfe ; and the codes of Wes- 
sex, Mercia, and Kent blended in the doom-book 
of a common England. 

The Danes Xhc kiug's work of pcacc, however, was now 

' land. ' drawing to an end. We have seen how anxiously, 
while girding himself for the coming strife, ^Ellfred 
was looking out through these six years of quiet, 
from 878 to 884, over the West -Saxon frontier.' 
What helped him to give rest to his land — as he 
knew well — was not only the peace of Wedmore, 
but the work which the pirates had found to do 
on the other side of the Channel ; for their defeat 



* Of the seventy-seven clauses of Alfred's law, fifty-three relate to 
personal injuries ; these are taken from the Kentish codes, especial- 
ly that of ^thelberht, with but slight change save in the amount of 
the fine. The rest are mainly borrowed from Ine, whose agricult- 
ural laws, however, are wholly omitted ; and there are a few mis- 
cellaneous laws, which may be -Alfred's own, or taken from the 
lost code of Offa. 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws and Inst. i. 59. 

^ Among other causes for anxiety was the desertion of English- 
men to the Danes. In Cod. Dip. 1078 we hear of an ealdorman, 
Wulfhere, who "suum dominum regem ^Ifredum et patriam, ultra 
jusjurandum quam regi et suis omnibus optimatibus juraverat, dere- 
liquit." This is a very early instance of the oath of allegiance. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, j^i - 

in England had thrown them back on their old chap. iv. 
field of attack in the land of the Franks. The Jiifred. 
establishment of the Danelaw gave them a base 878^oi. 
of operations for descents on the opposite coast,' 
and when the host under Guthrum sailed home to 
East Anglia, after its repulse from Wessex, it was 
in order to sail off again to the Scheldt, The close 
of the struggle in England threw, in fact, the whole 
weight of the pirate onset on the Franks. It fell 
above all on Northern Frankland, and soon the 
Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhine were full of pi- 
rate squadrons. The Frank kings fought bravely 
as of old, though their strength was still broken by 
the dynastic quarrels which the dream of' restoring 
the empire of Charles the Great stirred up perpet- 
ually among his descendants. But the resistance 
of Wessex roused a new vigor among its neighbors. 
Lewis the German fought the pirates hard on the 
Scheldt, while two grandsons of Charles the Bald, 
Lewis and Carloman, who mounted the throne of 
the West Franks in the year after the peace of 
Wedmore, checked Guthrum by a victory at Sau- 
court on the Somme. The contest, however, drew 
larger hosts to Guthrum's aid, and an overpowering 
force poured up the Rhine and harried Lorraine 
as far as Aachen. Lewis the German and Lewis 
of the West Franks alike passed away in this hour 
of gloom, while Carloman, still battling with the 
pirate host as it poured from Aachen over W^estern 
Frankland, died in 884. 

But the hard fiditina: told. The old ease with ^^^^f ^^- 

O o tack on 

which the Northmen passed from land to land, as England. 

' Eng. Chron. a. 880-884. 



1^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. resistance drove them to seek fresh ground for their 
Miftei. forays, was coming fast to an end. On both sides 
878^01. of the sea their hosts found men ready to meet blow 
' ■ with blow. When the pirates who had quitted the 
Loire steered for Wessex, yElfred's new fleet was 
ready for them, and a brisk engagement, in which 
four of their ships were sunk or captured, drove 
them from the coast.' The bulk of their hosts, 
who had followed Hasting to Northern Frankland, 
had to fight a stubborn fight at Haslo against the 
Emperor Charles. Before blows such as these the 
Wikings were driven to draw their whole force 
together, and in 884 the fleet of the Northmen was 
concentrated in the Somme. To rest idle, however, 
was to starve, and part of their host soon moved 
to Lorraine, while part pushed up the Thames and 
beset Rochester." But the old days of panic were 
over, and Rochester held bravely out till y^lfred 
could hurry to its relief and drive its besiegers to 
the sea with the loss of their horses.' Short as the 
campaign had been, it was to have important re- 
sults. Though the repulse of the pirates had been 
quick enough to hinder a general rising of the 
Danelaw in their aid, the Danes of Guthrum's king- 
dom had already set aside the Frith of Wedmore 
and given help to their brethren.* No sooner, there- 
fore, had the pirate-force retreated from Rochester 
than West-Saxon ships from Kent appeared off the 
East-Anglian coast to punish this breach of faith. 

1 Eng. Chron. a. 882. "^ Ibid. 885. 

^ " Equis, quos de Francia secum adduxerant." — Asser (ed.Wise), 
p. 37. This shows the size of their ships. 
* ^thelweard, a. 885, lib. iv. c. 3. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 143 

A squadron of the freebooters was captured at the chap, iv. 
mouth of the Stour, and its crews slain. The insult .Eifred. 
was avenged by a sudden and successful rally of sts-soi. 
the East Anglians, in which the king's ships were 
destroyed, but the measures which Alfred took in 
the next year show that the rally was followed by 
submission, and that a fresh peace had been made 
between the combatants on terms that implied 
Guthrum's recognition of the superior strength of 
the West-Saxon king. 

The Essex which the Danes had occupied till ^V^'^/ 

^ and 

now, as a dependency of their East-Anglian realm, London. 
must have been the older kingdom of the East Sax- 
ons, a tract which included not only the modern 
shire that bears their name, but our Middlesex and 
Hertfordshire, and whose centre, or " mother - city," 
was London. London had, as yet, played little part 
in English history ; indeed, for nearly half a century 
after its conquest by the East Saxons it wholly dis- 
appears from our view. Its position, however, was 
such that traffic could ndt long fail to re-create the 
town, and the advantages which had drawn trade 
and population to the Roman Londinium must have 
already been at work in repeopling the English 
London. Its growth, however, was for a while to 
be arrested ; for the conquest of the town by Ecg- 
berht, in his general reunion of the English States, 
was quickly followed by the struggle with the Danes. 
To London the war brought all but ruin ; so violent, 
in fact, was the shock to its life that its very bishop- 
ric seemed for a time to cease to exist.' The Roman 
walls must have been broken and ruined, for we hear 

' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 275. 



144 ^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. of no resistance, such as that which, in later days, 

mured. made the city England's main bulwark against 

878-901. northern attack; and in 851 it was plundered by 

the marauders, who again wintered at Fulham in 

880, when the city was probably subjected anew to 

their devastations. At the peace of Wedmore it 

must have been left, like the rest of Essex, in the 

hands of Guthrum. But with the war of 886 came 

its deliverance, for at the close of the strife with 

East Anglia we find London in JElfred's hands. 

Whether he had won it by actual siege or no,' he 

" peopled " or " settled " it, and handed it over to 

the Mercian ealdorman ^thelred to hold against 

the Danes. 

^Pf^. The cession of London, however, was only part 

Division , . ■' ^ 

of Essex, of the sacrifice by which Guthrum won peace. The 
geographical boundaries, which it names, show that 
the " Frith between ^Elfred and Guthrum," which 
has commonly been identified with the Frith con- 
cluded at Wedmore, is really the peace of 886 ; and 
that its provisions represent a territorial readjust- 
ment by which East Anglia bought peace from the 
king. The older Essex was broken into two parts 
by an artificial line of demarcation between Guth- 
rum's realm and the Mercian ealdormanry, a line 
which passed from the Thames up the Lea as far 
as its sources near Hertford, thence struck straight 

' " Obsidetur a rege -Alfredo urbs Lundonii," says ^thelweard ; 
but Earle (Parallel Chron. p. 310) argues that this is a mere miscon- 
ception of the Chron. a. 886, "gesette Alfred cyning Lundenburg," 
.^thelweard substituting "besette" for "gesette," " besieged " for 
"colonized" or "peopled." All the later authorities follow the 
Chronicle, or Asser's " restauravit et habitabilem fecit." — Asser (ed. 
Wise), p. 52. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. j^r 

over the Chilterns, and down their slopes into the chap. iv. 
valley of the Ouse, at Bedford, and thence followed Alfred, 
the countless bends of Ouse to the point where its sts^oi. 
course was cut by the line of the Watling Street, 
near Stony Stratford.' In other words, the western 
half of the East-Saxon kingdom was torn away from 
the eastern half to form a district around London." 
The division may be but the return to an earlier 
arrangement ; for some such parting must have 
taken place when Ecgberht joined Essex to his 
" eastern kingdom " of Kent, while London was still 
left in Mercian hands. This arrangement, however, 
was so soon put an end to by the reunion of London 
and Essex in the kingdom of Guthrum, that it would 
have left hardly a trace of its existence but for the 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 153. At this point, where the line hit the 
Watling Street, the territories of Guthrum and Mercia ceased to 
march together, and it was, therefore, needless further to define the 
boundaries of either. But the border-line refers strictly to these 
two realms ; and the common reading of it, as if from this point 
Watling Street formed the bound between the rest of the Danelaw, 
i. e. the territory of the Five Boroughs and Mercia, has no founda- 
tion in the actual text of the frith. There must have been a sepa- 
rate frith between the Five Boroughs and English Mercia, no doubt 
with a like definition of the boundary line, as there was certainly 
such a frith between Wessex and Northumbria (Eng. Chron. a. 911), 
but both are lost. 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 5, says of London, "Quae est sita in aquilo- 
nari ripa Tamesis fluminis, in confinio East Seaxum, et Middle 
Seaxum, sed tamen ad East Seaxum ilia civitas cum veritate perti- 
net." It maybe doubted whether " Middle-Sexe" were heard of 
before this assignment of the old East-Saxon borderland as a " Pa- 
gus" for London in 886, when the need arose for a distinguishing 
name for its inhabitants. I shall, however, deal afterwards with the 
beairing of this division on the general question of the " shires ;" 
here we need only note that the question has hardly arisen, as the 
line of the Frith is far from representing the later lines of the shires 
along its course. 

10 



1^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. permanent severance which was now made by the 
MUred. Frith of 886. It was this which gave both terri- 
878^01. tories the shape which they still retain, which fixed 
— the border of Essex at the Lea, and annexed to 
London that district, which, from its position be- 
tween West Saxon and East Saxon, either now or 
at some earlier time, was known as the land of the 
Middlesexe. 
Fosi/iou In a military point of view, the recovery of the 
Danes Thamcs valley, with the winning and fortification 
of London, was of great moment, for it closed to 
the Danes that water-way by which, in past times, 
the pirates had advanced to the attack of Wessex. 
Its military results, however, proved to be the least 
results of the war. Till now yElfred's victories had 
seemed a mere saving of Wessex, a temporary re- 
pulse of the Dane from a jDart of Britain. But the 
character of the war, as it reopened in 885, showed 
how much greater a work than this had been done 
at Athelney and Edington. With the Frith of 
Wedmore the whole military position of the Danes 
had in fact been reversed. From an attitude of 
attack they had been thrown back on an attitude 
of defence. The Northmen had failed to crush the 
house of Cerdic, and already it seemed as if the 
house of Cerdic was turning to crush the Northmen. 
The driving off of the pirates, the attack on East 
Anglia, the recovery of London and the lands about 
it, showed England that in Wessex and its king 
the country possessed a force not only strong 
enough to withstand the Danes, but strong enough 
to take in hand the undoing of what the Danes 
had done. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 147 

The consciousness of such a change at once chap. iv. 
made itself felt. If any date can be given for the Jiifred. 
foundation of a national monarchy, as distinct from 878^oi. 
the earlier supremacy of king over king, it is the ^~y 
year 886. In that year, says the chronicle, " all the ''^^'^^^^ 
Angel-cyn turned to Alfred, save those that were 
under bondage to Danish men.'" The old tribal 
jealousies were, if not destroyed, at least subordi- 
nated to the sense of a common patriotism, and a 
sense of national existence began from this moment 
to give life and vigor to the new conception of a 
national sovereignty. If the Dane had struck down 
the dominion of Ecgberht, it was the Dane who was 
to brina: about even more than its restoration. Set 
face to face with a foreign foe, the English people 
was waking to a consciousness of its own existence ; 
the rule of the stranger was crushing provincial 
jealousies and deepening the sense of a common 
nationality; while the question of political and mili- 
tary supremacy was settled as it had never been set- 
tled before. Wessex alone had repulsed the Dane. 
The West Saxons had not only kept their own free- 
dom : they had become the only possible champions 
of the freedom of other Englishmen. The old jeal- 
ousy of their greatness was lost in a craving for 
their aid, for it was plain that deliverance from the 
invader, if it came at all, must come through the 
sword of the West-Saxon king. It was no wonder, 
then, that the eyes of Northumbrian and Mercian 
turned more and more to ^E^lfred, or that his work 
gleamed over England like a light of hope. His 
slow, patient undoing of the evil which the Danes 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 886. 



1^8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. had done in Wessex was a promise of its undoing 
jEifred. throughout the nation at large. 

878^01. But if the growth of this sentiment gave a moral 
LMiect- strength to Alfred's position, the sentiment itself 
nairitin grained laro^eness and disunity from the conception 

of Ens,- ^ " . . '' . . 

land, of national rule which it found embodied in the 
king. Hardly had this second breathing-space been 
won in the long conflict with the enemy than vEl- 
fred turned anew to his work of restoration. The 
ruin that the Danes had wrought had been no mere 
material ruin. When they first appeared off her 
shores, England stood in the fore-front of European 
culture ; her scholars, her libraries, her poetry, had 
no rivals in the western world. But all, or nearly 
all, of this culture had disappeared. The art and 
learning of Northumbria had been destroyed at a 
blow ; and throughout the rest of the Danelaw the 
ruin was as complete. The very Christianity of 
Mid-Britain was shaken; the sees of Dunwich and 
Lindsey came to an end ; at Lichfield and Elmham 
the succession of bishops became broken and irreg- 
ular; even London hardly kept its bishop's stool. 
But its letters and civilization were more than shak- 
en — they had vanished in the sack of the great 
abbeys of the Fen. Even in Wessex, which ranked 
as the least advanced of the English kingdoms, Al- 
fred could recall that he saw, as a child, " how the 
churches stood filled with treasures and books, and 
there was also a great multitude of God's servants ;" 
but this was " before it had all been ravaged and 
burned.'" "So clean was learning decayed among 

^ " I remembered also how I saw, before it had all been ravaged 
and burned, how the churches throughout the whole of England 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i^g 

English folk," says the king, " that very few were ^hap. iv. 
there on this side Humber that could understand miftei. 
their rituals in English, or translate aught out of 878-90i. 
Latin into English, and I ween there were not many 
beyond the Humber. So few of them were there 
that I cannot bethink me of a single one south of 
Thames when I came to the kingdom.'" It was, in 
fact, only in the fragment of Mercia which had been 
saved from the invaders that a gleam of the old in- 
tellectual light lingered in the school which Bishop 
Werfrith had gathered round him at Worcester. 

It is in his efforts to repair this intellectual ruin Alfred's 

Z JltcllccttLdl 

that we see ^Elfred's conception of the work he had aw/^. 
to do. The Danes had, no doubt, brought with 
them much that was to enrich the temper of the 
coming England, a larger and freer manhood, a 
greater daring, a more passionate love of personal 
freedom, better seamanship and a warmer love of 
the sea, a keener spirit of trafBc, and a range of 
trade -ventures which dragged English commerce 
into a wider world. But their work of destruction 
threatened to rob England of things even more pre- 
cious than these. In saving Wessex, yElfred had 
saved the last refuge of all that we sum up in the 
word civilization, of that sense of a common citizen- 
ship and nationality, of the worth of justice and or- 
der and good government, of the harmony of indi- 
vidual freedom in its highest form with the general 
security of society, of the need for a co-operation of 

stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a great 
multitude of God's servants." — Pref. to .Alfred's translation of 
Gregory's Pastoral (ed. Sweet). 
* Pref. to Pastoral (ed. Sweet). 



I50 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. IV. every moral and intellectual force in the develop- 
.ffiifred. ment both of the individual man and of the people 
878-901. as a whole, which England had for two centuries 
been either winning from its own experience or 
learning from the tradition of the past. It was be- 
cause literature embodied what was worthiest in this 
civilization that ^^Ifred turned to the restoration of 
letters. He sought in Mercia for the learning that 
Wessex had lost.' He made the Mercian Plegmund 
Archbishop of Canterbury ; "" Werfrith, Bishop of 
Worcester, helped him in his own literary efforts, 
and two Mercian priests — .^thelstan and Wei*wulf — 
became his chaplains and tutors. But it was by ex- 
ample as well as precept that the king called Eng- 
land again to the studies it had abandoned. " What 
of all his troubles troubled him the most," he used 
to say, " was that, when he had the age and ability 
to learn, he could find no masters." But now that 
masters could be had, he worked day and night* 
He stirred nowhere without having some scholar by 
him. He remained true, indeed, to his own tongue 
and his own literature. His memory was full of 
English songs, as he had caught them from singers' 
lips; and he was not only fond of repeating them, 
but taught them carefully to his children." . But he 

• Asser (ed. Wise), p. 46. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Peterborough), a. 890. 

' " Die noctuque, quandocunque aliquam licentiam haberet, libros 
ante se recitare talibus imperabat, non enim unquam sine aliquo 
eorum se esse pateretur, quapropter pene omnium librorum notitiam 
habebat, quamvis per seipsum aliquid adhuc de libris intelligere 
non posset ; non enim adhuc aliquid legere inceperat." — Asser (ed. 
Wise), p. 46. 

* " Et Saxonicos libros recitare, et maxime Saxonica carmina 
memoriter discere, aliis imperare, et solus assidue pro viribus stu- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



151 



knew that the actual knowledge of the world must chap, iv. 
be sought elsewhere. Before many years were over Alfred, 
he had taught himself Latin/ and was soon skilled 878-90i. 
enough in it to render Latin books into the English 
tongue. 

His wide sympathy sought for aid in this work ^-f^^^- 
from other lands than his own. " In old time," the 
king wrote sadly,' " men came hither from foreign 
lands to seek for instruction ; and now, if we are to 
have it, we can only get it from abroad." He sought 
it among the West Franks and the East Franks ; 
Grimbald came from St. Omer to preside over the 
new abbey he founded at Winchester, while John, 
the Old Saxon, was fetched — it may be from the 
Westphalian abbey of Corbey — to rule the monas- 
tery he set up at Athelney.' A Welsh bishop was 



diosissime non desinebat." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 43. His children, 
Eadward and ^Ifthryth, were not left " sine liberali disciplina," 
" nam et psalmos et Saxonicos libros et maxime Saxonica carmina 
studiose didicere, et frequentissime libris utuntur." — lb. 43. In 
the palace-school " utriusque linguae libri, Latinse scilicet et Sax- 
onicae assidue legebantur." — lb. 43. So of his nobles, if any were 
too ignorant or old to profit by " liberalibus studiis," " Suum si 
haberet filium, aut etiam aliquem propinquum suum, vel etiam si 
aliter non habeat suum proprium hominem liberum vel servum, 
quem ad lectionem longe ante promoverat, libros ante se die noc- 
teque quandocunque unquam ullam haberet licentiam Saxonicos 
imperabat recitare." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 71. Stray references 
throughout his writings show his familiarity with the Old English 
hero-legends : " Where are now the bones of Weland ?" he renders 
the "Fabricii ossa" of Boethius. 

' Either in 885 or 887. See Pauli, Life of Alfred, p. 169. " Non 
enim adhuc legere inceperat," says Asser (ed. Wise), p. 46, apparent- 
ly of the time soon after the Frith of Wedmore. I take " legere " 
to have its usual meaning, that of reading and translating Latin. 

^ Pref. to Pastoral Book. 

' Asser (ed. Wise), p. 61. 



1^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. drawn with the same end to Wessex ; and the ac- 
jEifred. count he has left of his visit and doings at the court 
878^01. brings us face to face with the king. " In those 
days," says Bishop Asser, " I was called by the king 
from the western and farthest border of Britain, and 
came to Saxon-land ; and when, in a long journey, I 
set about approaching him, I arrived, in company 
with guides of that people, as far as the region of 
the Saxons, who lie on the right hand of one's road, 
which in the Saxon tongue is called Sussex. There 
for the first time I saw the king in the king's house, 
w^hich is named Dene. And when I had been re- 
ceived by him with all kindness, he began to pray 
me earnestly to devote myself to his service, and be 
of his household, and to leave for his sake all that I 
possessed on the western side of Severn, promising 
to recompense me with greater possessions." Asser, 
however, refused to, forsake his home, and Alfred 
was forced to be content with a promise of his re- 
turn six months after. " And when he seemed sat- 
isfied with this reply, I gave him my pledge to re- 
turn in a given time, and after four days took horse 
again and set out on my return to my country. But 
after I had left him and reached the city of Win- 
chester, a dangerous fever laid hold of me, and for 
twelve months and a week I lay with little hope of 
life. And when at the set time I did not return to 
him as I had promised, he sent messengers to me 
to hasten my riding to him, and seek for the cause 
of my delay. But, as I could not take horse, I sent 
another messenger back to him to show him the 
cause of my tarrying, and to declare that if I recov- 
ered from my infirmity I would fulfil the promise I 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i^^ 

had made. When my sickness then had departed chap.iv. 
I devoted myself to the king's service on these terms, JEifred. 
that I should stay with him for six months in every 878-90i. 
year, if I could, or, if not, I should stay three months 
in Britain and three months in Saxon-land. So it 
came about that I made my way to him in the 
king's house, which is called Leonaford, and was 
greeted by him with all honor. And that time I 
stayed with him in his court through eight months, 
during; which I read to him whatever books he 
would that we had at hand ; for it is his constant 
wont, whatever be the hinderances either in mind 
or body, by day and by night, either himself to read 
books aloud or to listen to others reading them." ' 

The work, however, which most told upon English ^J.^^^^l'^ 
culture was done, not by these scholars, but by JE\- Prose. 
fred himself. The king's aim was simple and prac- 
tical. He desired that " every youth now in England, 
that is freeborn and has wealth enough, be set to 
learn, as long as he is not fit for any other occupa- 
tion, till they well know how to read English writ- 
ing; and let those be afterwards taught in the Latin 
tongue who are to continue learning, and be pro- 
moted to a higher rank." ' For this purpose he set 
up, like Charles the Great, a school for the young 
nobles at his own court' Books were needed for 
them as well as for the priests, to the bulk of whom 
Latin was a strange tongue, and the king set him- 
self to provide English books for these readers. It 
was in carrying out this simple purpose that ^Elfred 

1 Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 47-51. 
"^ Pref. to Pastoral (ed. Sweet). 
' Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 43, 44. 



1^4 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. changed the whole front of EngHsh literature. In 
.asifred. the paraphrase of Cadmon, in the epic of Beowulf, 
878^01. '^^ the verses of Northumbrian singers, in battle- 
songs and ballads, English poetry had already risen 
to a grand and vigorous life. But English prose 
hardly existed. Since Theodore's time theology 
had been the favorite study of English scholars, 
and theology naturally took a Latin shape. His- 
torical literature followed Bceda's lead in finding a 
Latin vehicle of expression.' Saints' lives, which 
had now become numerous, were as yet always writ- 
ten in Latin. It was from Alfred's day that this 
tide of literary fashion suddenly turned. English 
prose started vigorously into life. Theology stooped 
to an English dress.' History became almost whol- 
ly vernacular.' The translation of Latin saint-lives 
into English became one of the most popular liter- 
ary trades of the day. Even medicine found Eng- 
lish interpreters. A national literature, in fact, 
sprang suddenly into existence which was without 
parallel in the western world.* 

^ " The charters anterior to Alfred are invariably in Latin." — Pal- 
grave, Engl. Commonw. i. 56. 

* From the time of -Alfred's version of " The Pastoral Book," re- 
ligious works like .^Ifric's Homilies are written in English. In this 
vernacular theology England stood alone. 

^ From the days of Alfred to the eve of the Norman Conquest, 
when the "Vita Haroldi" forms an exception (for the Encomium 
Emmse is hardly of English origin), we possess only a single Latin 
historian, the ealdorman ^thelweard. 

* "The old English writers," says Mr. Sweet, "did not learn the 
art of prose composition from Latin models ; they had a native his- 
torical prose, which shows a gradual elaboration and improvement, 
quite independent of Latin or any other foreign influence. This is 
proved by an examination of the historical pieces inserted into the 
Chronicle. The first of these, the account of the death of Cynewulf 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. j^^ 

. It is thus that in the literatures of modern Eu- chap, iv. 
rope that of England leads the way. The Romance JEifred. 
tongues — the tongues of Italy, Gaul, and Spain — 878-90i. 
were only just emerging into definite existence ^^j^ed's 
when i^lfred wrote. Ulfilas, the first Teutonic ^'2^'^^f' 
prose-writer, found no successors among his Gothic 
people ; and none of the German folk across the 
sea were to possess a prose literature of their own 
for centuries to come. English, therefore, was not 
only the first Teutonic literature — it was the earliest 
prose literature of the modern world. And at the 
outset of English literature stands the figure of 
Alfred. The mighty roll of books that fills our 
libraries opens with the translations of the king. 
He took his books as he found them — they were, in 
fact, the popular manuals of his day : the compila- 



and Cynehard, is composed in the abrupt disconnected style of oral 
conversation : it shows prose composition in its rudest and most 
primitive form, and bears a striking resemblance to the earliest 
Icelandic prose. In the detailed narrative of Alfred's campaign 
and sea-fights the style assumes a different aspect ; without losing 
the force and simplicity of the earlier pieces, it becomes refined 
and polished to a high degree, and yet shows no traces of foreign 
influence. Accordingly, in the ' Orosius,' the only translation of 
Alfred's which from the similarity of its subject admits of a direct 
comparison, we find almost exactly the same language and style as 
in the contemporary historical pieces of the Chronicle. In the 
Bede, where the ecclesiastical prevails over the purely historical, 
the general style is less national, less idiomatic than in the ' Oro- 
sius,' and in purely theological works, such as the ' Pastoral,' the 
influence of the Latin original reaches its height. Yet even here 
there seems to be no attempt to engraft Latin idioms on the Eng- 
lish version ; the foreign influence is only indirect, chiefly showing 
itself in the occasional clumsiness that results from the difficulty 
of expressing and defining abstract ideas in a language unused to 
theological and metaphysical subtleties." — Introduction to Pastoral 
Book (E. E. Text Soc), p. xli. 



1^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. tion of " Orosius," which was then the one accessible 
a;ifred. hand-book of universal history, the works of Bada, 
878-901. the " Consolation " of Boethius, the Pastoral Book 
of Pope Gregory. " I wondered greatly," he says, 
" that of those good men who were aforetime all 
over England, and who had learned perfectly these 
books, none would translate any part into their 
own language. But I soon answered myself, and 
said, ' They never thought that men would be so 
reckless and learning so fallen.' " As it was, how- 
ever, the books had to be rendered into English by 
the king himself, with the help of the scholars he 
had gathered round him. " When I remembered," 
he says, in his preface to the Pastoral Book," " how 
the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed 
throughout England, and yet many could read 
English writing, I began, among other various and 
manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into 
Eno^lish the book which is called in Latin Pasto- 
ralis, and in English Shepherd's Book, sometimes 
word by word, and sometimes according to the 
sense, as I had learned it from Plegmund, my arch- 
bishop, and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbald, my 
mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest. And when 
■ I had learned it as I could best understand it, and 
as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it 
into English." 
Their Alfred was too wise a man not to own the 
' worth of such translations in themselves. The 
Bible, he urged, with his cool common-sense, had 
told on the nations through versions in their own 
tongues. The Greeks knew it in Greek. The 

' Alfred's Pastoral Book (ed. Sweet). 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 1^7 

Romans knew it in Latin. Englishmen might chap. iv. 
know it, as they might know the other great books .Alfred, 
of the world, in their own English. " I think it bet- sts^oi. 
ter, therefore, to render some books that are most 
needful for men to know into the language that 
we may all understand." But Alfred showed him- 
self more than a translator. He became an editor 
for his people. Here he omitted, there he expand- 
ed. He enriched his first translation, the " Orosius," 
by a sketch of new geographical discoveries in the 
north. He gave a West-Saxon form to his selec- 
tions from Baeda. In one place he stops to explain 
his theory of government, his wish for a thicker 
population, his conception of national welfare as 
consisting in a due balance of the priest, the thegn, 
and the churl. The mention of Nero spurs him to 
an outbreak against abuses of power. The cold 
acknowledgment of a Providence by Boethius gives 
way to an enthusiastic acknowledgment of the 
goodness of God.' As Alfred writes, his large- 
hearted nature flings off its royal mantle, and he 
talks as a man to men. " Do not blame me," he 
prays, with a charming simplicity, " if any know 
Latin better than I, for every man must say what 
he says and do what he does according to his 
abiHty."^ 

Amonsf his earliest undertakina^s was an Eno^lish "^J^^ , 

^ . . .^ ^ English 

version of Baeda's history ; ' and it was probably the chronicle. 

^ See the instances given from his " Boethius " by Sharon Turner, 
Hist. Anglo-Sax. ii. cap. 2. 

^ Pref. to the Boethius, Pauli's Alfred, p. 174. 

^ Pauli (Life of Alfred, p. 180) shows that the Bseda must have 
preceded the English rendering of the Chronicle, as this follows the 
version of Baeda in one of its most characteristic blunders. 



1^8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. making of this version which suggested the thought 
^Eifred. o£ a work which was to be memorable in our Htera- 
878^01. ture.' Winchester, Hke most other Episcopal mon- 
asteries, seems to have had its own Bishop's Roll, a 
series of meagre and irregular annals in the Latin 
tongue, for the most part mere jottings of the dates 
when West- Saxon bishop and West- Saxon king 
mounted throne and bishop-stool. The story of 
this Roll and its aftergrowth has been ingeniously 
traced by modern criticism ; and the general conclu- 
sions at which it has arrived seem probable enough. 
The entries of the Roll were posted up at uncer- 
tain intervals and with more or less accuracy from 
the days of the first West -Saxon bishop, Birinus. 
Meagre as they were, these earlier annals were 
historical in character and free from any mythical 
intermixture ; but save for a brief space in Ine's day 
they were purely West Saxon,^ and with the trou- 
bles which followed Ine's death they came to an end 
altogether. It was not until the revival of West- 
Saxon energy under Ecgberht that any effort was 
made to take up the record again and to fill up the 
gap that its closing had made.' But Swithun was 

' In this sketch of the earHer history of the Enghsh Chronicle I 
have mainly followed Mr. Earle (Two Saxon Chronicles, Parallel, 
1865, Introduction), whose minute analysis has placed the question 
of its composition on a critical basis. 

^ Earle finds a change in the Chronicle at 682. Ine reigned from 
688. The annals still remained mere notes of the death and acces- 
sion of kings and bishops, but were no longer confined to Wessex, 
including from this point like events in Northumbria, Mercia, and 
Kent (Earle, Introd. p. xi.). For the difficulties in the dates through- 
out this portion, from 682 to 755, see Stubbs's preface to his edition 
of " Roger of Hoveden," vol. i. pp. xxxv. et seq. 

^ The meagre and irregular entries from 758, which Earle styles 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



159 



probably the first to begin the series of develop- chap. iv. 
ments which transformed this Bishop's Roll into a ^Eifred. 
national history ; and the clerk to whom he intrust- sts^oi. 
ed its compilation continued the Roll by a series of 
military and political entries to which we owe oui 
knowledge of the reign of ^Ethelwulf, while he en- 
larged and revised the work throughout, prefixing 
to its opening those broken traditions of the com- 
ing of our fathers ' which, touched as they are here 
and there by mythical intermixture, remain the one 
priceless record of the conquest of Britain.' 

It was this Latin chronicle of Swithun's clerk ^^^ g'-o'i«th 

itnaer 

that y^ If red seems to have taken in hand about 887, Alfred. 
and whose whole character he changed by giving it 
an English form." In its earlier portions he carried 
still further the process, of expansion. An intro- 
duction dating from the birth of Christ, drawn from 
the work of Baeda, was added to its opening, and 

(Introd. p. xii.) " mere chronography, an inefifectual attempt to fill out 
the tale of years with corresponding events," may have been thrown 
together just after Ecgberht's accession, as there is a break in the 
genealogical preface that precedes them which suggests that it orig- 
inally closed with Ecgberht's predecessor, Beorhtric. 

* For the worth of these traditions, see Earle (Introd. pp. ix. x.), 
apd my " Making of England," p. 28, note. 

^ Though hardly attributable to Sv/ithun's own pen, Mr. Earle 
(Introd. p. xiv.) has little doubt of the composition of this Chronicle 
" during his episcopate and at his see." The date of its compilation 
is shown by the "genealogical demonstration" (p. xii.) with which 
it closes at the death of .^thelwulf. So far as we can see, the work 
was still in Latin. 

^. Pauli dates -Alfred's chronicle-work as "soon after 890" (Life 
of Alfred, pp. 180, 191). Earle, however, shows the probability of 887 
for the king's first compilation, as not only is there a distinct change 
in the character of the entries at this point, but Asser must have had 
in his hands a chronicle which ended in 887, the information he 
draws from that quarter ending in that year (Earle, Introd, p. xv.). 



l6o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iv. entries from the same source were worked into the 
j:ifred. after -annals.' But it was where Swithun's work 
878-901. ended that yElfred's own work really began, for it 
is from the death of vEthelwulf that the Roll widens 
into a continuous narrative, a narrative full of life 
and originality, whose vigor and freshness mark the 
gift of a new power to the English tongue. The 
appearance of such a work in their own mother- 
speech could not fail to produce a deep impression 
on the people whose story it told. With it English 
history became the heritage of the English people. 
Bseda had left it accessible merely to noble or priest; 
Alfred was the first to give it to the people at large. 
Nor was this all. The tiny streams of historic rec- 
ord, which had been dispersed over the country at 
large, were from this time drawn into a single chan- 
nel. The Chronicle — for from this time we may use 
the term by which the work has become famous — 
served even more than the presence of the Dane to 
put an end to the existence of distinct annals in 
Northumbria and Mercia,^ and to help on the prog- 
ress of national unity by reflecting everywhere the 
same national consciousness. 



* As far, that is, as Baeda goes, to 731. From 449 to 731 the en- 
tries for thirty-one years are wholly, and those for twelve more par- 
tially, drawn from Baeda. 

^ Stubbs (Pref. to Hoveden, vol. i. p. xi.) points out that its publi- 
cation had possibly " the same effect on the previously existing ma- 
terials and schemes of history that the publication of Higden's Poly- 
chronicon had in the fourteenth, and the invention of printing in the 
fifteenth centuries. It stopped the writing of new books and insured 
the destruction of the old." To this cause he attributes the want 
of any distinctly Northumbrian history of the ninth century, in 
spite of the existence of scholars at York till after the invasion and 
settlement of the Danes. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i6i 

When his work on Baeda was finished, Alfred, it chap, iv. 
is thought, began his translation of the Consolation .Alfred, 
of Boethius; and it is not improbable' that the 878-90i. 
metrical translation of the Metra of Boethius was ]^~^ai 
also from his hand. From philosophy and this ^f'^'J^^'- 
effort at poetry he turned to give to his people a 
book on practical theology. As far as we know, the 
translation of the Pastoral Rule of Pope Gregory 
was his last work ; and of all his translations it was 
the most carefully done. It is only as we follow 
the king in the manifold activity of his life that 
we understand his almost passionate desire for that 
" stillness " which was essential to his work. But it 
was only by short spaces that the land was " still," 
and once more -Alfred's work of peace was to be 
broken off by a renewal of the old struggle. Five 
years, indeed, had passed since the last attack ; but 
with the death of Guthrum-^Ethelstan, in 890,' the 
king lost his hold on East Anglia; and though the 
frith between the two nations was not only renewed, 
but secured by the giving of hostages, Alfred must 
have seen that it needed but a little aid from with- 
out to rouse the men of the Danelaw to a renewal 
of their attack on Wessex. And at this juncture 
the aid from without suddenly offered itself; for the 
fortunes of England were swayed by a revolution 
which was going on in the north. 

Throu8:h the years that followed the Peace of ,^f^^"/^. 

^ ■' Pair -hair. 

Wedmore the movement towards unity, which the 
Northmen had furthered by their descents on the 
English peoples, took a new vigor in their own 

' Geschichte der Englischen Litteratur, p. loi. Rd. ten Brink. 
— (A. S. G.) ^ Eng. Chron. a. 890. 

II 



152 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. homeland ; the old isolation of fiord from fiord, and 
.2Eifred. dale from dale, began to break down ; and the little 
878^1. commonwealths, which had held so jealously aloof 
' from each other, were drawn together whether they 
would or no. Great kingdoms thus grew up in 
each of the three regions of Scandinavia. Norway 
was the first to become a single monarchy. Legend 
told how one of its many rulers, Harald of Westfold, 
sent his men to bring him Gytha of Hordaland, a 
girl whom he had chosen for his wife ; and how 
Gytha sent his men back again with taunts at the 
lord of so petty a realm. The taunts went home, 
and Harald swore, " Never will I clip or comb my 
hair till I have mastered all Norway with scatt and 
dues and king's domains, or died in the trying."' 
So every spring-tide came war and hosting, harrying 
and burning, till in 883 a great fight at Hafursfiord 
settled the matter," and Harald " Ugly Head," as 
men called him while the strife lasted, was free to 
shear his locks again, and became Harald Harfager, 
or " Fair-hair." ' 
Invasion fhc rcvolutlou ^avc frcsh life to the pirate raids 

of Hasting. iriivTi ii i 

abroad, for the Northmen loved no master, and a 
great multitude fled out of the country, some push- 
ing as far as Iceland and colonizing it; some sailing 
southward and waging war against their new lord 

^ Harald Fair-hairs Saga, c. v. Laing's Sea Kings, i. 274. 

"^ Ibid. 287. A poem on the battle speaks of English and Scot- 
tish warriors, and some from the Frankish coast, as engaged in it. 
These were of course simply Wikings who had gathered from these 
quarters for the strife. The battle was partly decided by " the fierce 
stone-storm's pelting rain." which formed a marked feature in all 
northern fighting. • 

= Ibid. 292. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 15^ 

from the Orkneys and Shetlands/ From these chap. iv. 
haunts, however, Harald drove them at last, sweep- iEifred. 
ing the coast as far as Man, summer after summer," sTs^oi. 
and setting up an earldom in the Orkneys, which 
furnished a new base of operations against the king- 
dom of the Scots, while the sea-kings steered south- 
ward to join Guthrum's host in the Rhine country, 
or Hasting in the Channel.' The impulse which 
the new-comers gave was sorely needed by the Wi- 
kings, for the bolder temper of Western Christendom 
was giving fresh vigor to the struggle against them. 
At the close of 891 the pirates were beaten by King 
Arnulf, on the Dyle, in a fight so decisive that they 
never after attempted to settle on German soil ; and 
even Hasting, master as he still was of northern 
Frankland, saw his host worn out by the resolute 
attacks of King Odo. It was time to seek new 
fields, and famine quickened the sea-kings' resolve. 
In 893 a fleet of two hundred and fifty vessels 
gathered at Boulogne, and steering for the port of 
Lymne the pirates established themselves in the 
neighboring Andredsweald;* while shortly after, 
Hasting himself, with eighty ships, entered the 
Thames, and pushing up the Swale into northern 
Kent formed his winter-camp at Milton. 



' Harald Fair-hair's Saga, c. v. Laing's Sea Kings, i. 288. 

^ Ibid. 291. 

^ If we follow the Saga, with Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 336, note, 
and 344, note), Hafursfiord may be dated in 883, and the Wikings' 
expulsion from the Orkneys, with the foundation of the earldom, 
had taken place before 893. 

* Eng. Chron. a. 893. The " Mickle wood, that we call Andred, 
was from east to west a hundred and twelve miles long, or longer, 
and thirty miles broad." 



164 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. IV. In the spring of 894 they pushed their raids into 

.nifred. Hampshire and Berkshire ; but the success of their 

878-901. enterprise hung on the co-operation of the Danelaw. 

Rhincf The compact with Alfred, however, was still fresh, 

of the and the Eno^lish Danes remained quiet,' while the 

Danelaw. . '^ . '■ 

king, who had detached his son Eadward with a 
small force to watch the pirate host through the 
winter, and stationed ealdorman ^thelred within 
the walls of London to hold the line of the 
Thames, himself, by skilful encampments, held the 
two bodies of his assailants for a year at bay, and 
prisoned them within the bounds of the Weald. 
For a while the king had hopes of ending the war 
by a new treaty such as that of Wedmore. Hasting 
swore to refrain from further ravages, and confirmed 
his oath by giving hostages and suffering his two 
boys to be baptized;' but the negotiations were a 
mere blind, and the good faith of the English Danes 
yielded at last to the call of their kinsmen. The 
forces in the Andredsweald threw themselves, by a 
rapid march, across the Thames ; and Alfred had 
hardly gathered men to strengthen the army which 
beset them in their camp on the Colne, when the 
secret of this movement was revealed by a rising of 
the whole Danelaw in their aid. 
'^withthe ^^^^ rising, however, only brought out the new 
Dams, strength of y^lf red's realm. Its policy of defence 
was set aside for a policy of rapid and energetic at- 



^ After the landing of Hasting, " Northumbrians and East Engle 
had given oaths to Alfred, and the East Engle six hostages" (Eng. 
Chron. a. 894). This, however, did not hinder them from joining 
the Danes, though not as yet in any general fashion. 

^ .^thelweard, a. 894, lib. iv. c. 3. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



165 



tack. The king's son, Eadward, who may have ruled chap, iv. 
in the Eastern Kingdom of Kent, Surrey, and Sus- JEifred. 
sex, with the Mercian ealdorman, ^thelred, added sts^oi. 
to their force the men of London, fell suddenly on 
the pirates' camp in Essex at a moment when it was 
stripped of defenders, and sank the ships moored 
within its intrenchment. The danger, however, was 
as great in the west as in the east, for the Danes 
again found allies in the Welsh. They were, no 
doubt, summoned to that quarter by the house of 
Roderic, which was now greatly harassed by the 
petty princes of the border who owned y^lfred's su- 
premacy. While a fleet from East Anglia, there- 
fore, coasted round to West Wales and moored off 
Exeter, the host from the Colne, which had formed 
a new camp at Shoebury, suddenly struck past Lon- 
don, along the line of the Thames, and, crossing the 
Cots wolds into the Severn valley, ravaged the lands 
of iElfred's allies. Alfred, however, in person, held 
Exeter against attack from the West Welsh and 
Cornwealas, while Eadward and -^thelred nerved 
themselves for a final blow in the west. Gathering 
forces "from every township east of Parret, and 
both east and west of the Selwood, and also north 
of Thames, and west of the Severn," from almost all 
-Alfred's England, in fact, save the western parts 
which were supplying the king's own camp on the 
Exe, and aided by " some part of the North-Welsh 
people," they caught the pirate host in the Severn 
valley at Buttington, forced it, after a siege of some 
weeks, to fight, defeated it with a great slaughter, 
and again drove it to its old quarters in Essex. 
Fresh supplies of fighting men, however, from the 



1 56 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. Danelaw enabled Hasting to repeat his dash upon 
Jiifrea. the west, and, marching day and night across Mid- 
878^1. Britain, to find a stronghold within the walls of 
^7~. y Chester. The strength of the house of Roderic lay 

Defeat of o ^ J 

the Danes, in this quarter of Wales, and the occupation of 
Chester must have aimed at securing their co-op- 
eration. Deserted as the city was, its Roman walls 
were too strong to force ; but by a close investment 
of the place through the winter, vEthelred at last 
drove the Northmen from their hold, though he was 
unable to follow them as they hurried through North 
Wales, and by a wide circuit through Northumbria 
again withdrew to a camp on the Lea.' Here they 
were joined by their brethren from the Channel, 
who, foiled before Exeter, fell back, ravaging along 
the coast to the Thames. A rout of the Londoners, 
who attacked them in 895, proved the strength of 
their camp on the Lea, some twenty miles from the 
great city, and through harvest-tide the king, who 
had now come up from the west, contented himself 
with w^atching it "while the people reaped their 
crops." But meanwhile he was preparing for a de- 
cisive stroke. The whole of the Danish ships had 
entered the Lea in 896, and lay under shelter of 
the camp, when the pirates suddenly found the 
river-course blocked by two strong fortresses. The 
retreat of their boats to the Thames and sea was 
thus wholly cut off,' and the forced abandonment of 
their fleet, as the pirates struck again from their 
camp to the Severn, practically ended the war. 
After a month in their camp at Bridgenorth the 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 895. This seems the meaning of a corrupt pas- 
sage in ^thelweard. ^ Eng. Chron. a. 896. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. J67 

Danish host broke up in 897. East Anghan and chariv. 
West AnsfHan returned to their home in the Dane- Alfred, 
law, while the followers of Hasting retreated to their 878-90i. 
former quarters across the Channel/ Alfred's 

" No wise man should desire a soft life," Alfred ^'fi- 
had written some, years before this last struggle 
with the Danes, " if he careth for any worship here 
from the world, or for eternal life after this life is 
over."' His own life had certainly been no soft 
one. Though he had hardly reached fifty years of 
age, incessant labor and care had told on the vigor 
of his youth, and he must have already felt the first 
touches of the weakness that was to bring him to 
the grave. But he was still a mighty hunter, wak- 
ing the stillness of the " Itene Wood," along the 
Southampton Water, or the stiller reaches of the 
Cornish moorlands, with hound and horn ; ' and his 
life was marked by the same vivid activity as of old. 
To the scholars he gathered round him he was the 
very type of a scholar, snatching every hour he 
could find to read or listen to books read to him.* 
The singers of his court found in him a brother 
singer, gathering the old songs of his people to teach 
them to his children,' breaking his renderings from 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 897. 

^ Transl. of Boethius, in Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Sax. ii. 48. 

^ " In omni venatoria arte industrius venator incessabiliterlaborat 
non in vanum, nam incomparabilis omnibus peritia et felicitate in 
ilia arte sicut et in cseteris omnibus Dei donis fuit, sicut et nos 
sspissime vidimus." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 16. 

* " Hsec est propria et usitatissima illius consuetude die noctuque, 
inter omnia alia mentis et corporis impedimenta, aut per se ipsum 
libros recitare aut aliis recitantibus audire." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 50. 

^ In his boyhood " Saxonica poemata die noctuque solers auditor 
relatu aliorum ssepissime audiens docibilis memoriter retinebat." 
—Asser (ed. Wise), p. 16. For his later life see ib. p. 43. 



1 68 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. the Latin with simple verse, or solacing himself in 
MUred. hours of depression with the music of the Psalms. 
878-901. He carried in his bosom a little hand-book in which 
he noted things as they struck him — now a bit of 
family genealogy, now a prayer, now such a story as 
that of Ealdhelm playing minstrel on the bridge/ 
He passed from court and study to plan buildings 
and instruct craftsmen and gold-workers, or to teach 
even falconers and dog-keepers their business.' At 
one time we find him planning a lantern with sides 
of horn, whose sheltered candles may serve as a 
rough means of measuring the hours ; at another de- 
lighting in the fair form and early promise of his 
grandson ^thelstan, and arraying him, child as he 
is, with the purple cloak and jewelled belt and gold- 
hilted sword of a royal cnecht f at another time urg- 
ing Bishop Werfrith to turn into English the " Dia- 
logues" of Gregory, at another hearing a law- case 
as he stood washing his hands in a chamber at 
Wardour.'' 
//is love of w\.?> love of stransrers, his questioninsfs of travellers 

strangers. ... 

?md scholars, betray an imaginative restlessness that 
longed to break out of the narrow world within 
which his own experience bound him.' None were 
more welcome at his court than men from other 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), p. 55. 

^ " Edificia nova machinatione facere." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 43. 
"Aurifices at artifices suos omnes, et falconarios et accipitrarios 
canicularios quoque docere,"— lb. 43, 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 210. 

* Kemble, Cod. Dip. 328 : " And the king stood, washed his hands 
at Wardour in the bower ; when he had done this he asked yEthelm 
why our judgment seemed not right," etc. 

^ " Ignotarum rerum investigation i solerter se jungebat." — Asser 
(ed. Wise), p. 44. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i5n 

lands ; the frankness and openness of spirit, which chap. iv. 
breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, showed Jiifred. 
itself above all in his converse with them, and a 878^oi. 
special part of his revenue was set aside for their 
entertainment/ It is in Alfred's court that Eng- 
land for the first time begins to emerge from her 
insular isolation, and to recognize herself as a Euro- 
pean State. Not only Welshmen and Irishmen, but 
" many Franks," as well as Bretons, with men alike 
from Southern Gaul and Friesland, the country 
about the mouths of the Rhine with which England 
was soon to come into closer contact, offered aid 
of book or sword to the king. Even Danes were 
among the comers,^ for the fight was hardly over 
when the fusion of races began, and we find a young 
noble, of " pagan " stock, playing scholar among the 
monks at Athelney.' 

Athelney, indeed, was the largest of Alfred's ex- ^^^^eiuey. 
periments in the way of getting foreign aid for his 
religious and intellectual undertakings. In found- 
ing this abbey, as a thank-offering for the deliverance 
which had begun in the marshes, he found his main 
obstacle in the refusal of every West Saxon, of free 
or noble birth, to become a monk. There were 

' " Eleemosynarum quoque studio et largitati indigenis et advenis 
omnium gentium, ac maxima et incomparabili contra omnes homi- 
nes affabilitate et jocunditate." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 44. 

^ " Franci autem multi, Frisones, Galli, Pagani, Britones et Scoti, 
Armorici, sponte se suo dominio subdiderunt, nobiles scilicet et 
ignobiles, quos omnes sicut suam propriam gentem, secundum 
suam dignitatem regebat, diligebat, honorabat, pecunia et potestate 
ditabat." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 44. 

^ " In quo monasterio unum Paganicae gentis edoctum in mo- 
nachico habitu degentem, juvenem admodum, vidimus, non ulti- 
mum scilicet eorum." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 6r. 



lyo THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. monasteries, indeed, still remaining in the country, 
iEifred. like Malmesbury or Glastonbury, but whether from 
878^01. the shock of the Danish inroads, or from the ten- 
dency of popular feeling, or from the circumstances 
of their original foundation, they either were or had 
become groups of unmarried clerks, bound together 
by the common endowment of the house, but re- 
fusing obedience to any definite rule.' " Regulars," 
as those who lived by rule were called, seem to have 
been looked on with scorn in Wessex, and Alfred 
found no West Saxon willing to become, in this 
sense, a monk. He could only meet the difficulty 
by a settlement of strangers. John, the Old Saxon, 
who was among the foreign scholars at his court, 
was sent into Somerset as abbot, a few priests and 
deacons were hired from abroad to join him, and, 
by an expedient that marks the time, slaves were 
bought in Gaul to serve as lay - brethren, and chil- 
dren from the same quarter to fill up, as they grew 
to manhood, under the abbot's teaching, the thin 
ranks of his monks." The experiment, however, 

' The passage in Asser (ed. Wise), p. 6i, is most important in its 
bearing on our later monastic history. " Quia nullum de sua pro- 
pria gente nobilem ac liberum hominem, nisi infantes . . . qui mo- 
nasticam voluntarie vellet subire vitam habebat, nimirum quia per 
multa retroacta annorum curricula monasticae vitse desiderium ab 
ilia tota gente, nee non et a multis aliis gentibus funditus desierat, 
quamvis perplurima adhuc monasteria in ilia regione constructa 
permaneant, nullo tamen regulam illius vitae ordinabiliter tenente 
(nescio quare) aut pro alienigenarum infestationibus quae saepissime 
terra marique hostiliter irrumpunt, aut etiam pro nimia illius gen- 
tis in omni genere divitiarum abundantia (propter quam multo 
magis id genus despectae monasticae vitae fieri existimo), ideo di- 
versi generis monachos in eodem monasterio congregare studuit." 

^ "Johannem presbyterum monachum, scilicit Eald Saxonum 
genere, Abbatem constituit, deinde ultramarines presbyteros quos- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



171 



proved an unsuccessful one. John was driven back chap. iv. 
to court by an attempt of some monks to assassi- .ffiifred. 
nate him, and we hear nothing of Athelney, as a sts^oi, 
school, in later days. 

In spite, however, of this luckless experiment, ^^'^z;^'^"'^ 
strangers were as welcome as ever at .Alfred's 
court, and we can still see in the king's own words 
with how keen an attention he listened to the tales 
of far-off lands that they brought him. Othere 
must have been one of the Wikings that the king 
had gathered about him for aid in fight against 
their brother plunderers ; it was to " his lord King 
.Alfred " that he told how long and narrow a land 
was the Northman's land. "All that man can past- 
ure or plough lies by the sea," hard pressed by the 
" wild moors," the broad fells, where Fin and Cwen 
carried on their warfare with the men of the fiords. 
Here Othere dwelt, " northernmost of all the North- 
men," in waste Halgoland, no one to the north of 
him save a few scattered Fin-folk. He was '■ one 
of the first men in that country, though he had not 
more than twenty horned cattle and twenty sheep 
and twenty swine, and the little that he ploughed, 
he ploughed with horses;" but he was wealthy in 
the wealth of the north, in his six hundred reindeer, 
in his whale-fishery, and in his share of the tribute 
the Fins paid the men of his country, the skins of 
martens, reindeer, and bear, cloaks of bear or other 



dam et diaconos ; ex quibus cum nee adhuc tantum numerum quan- 
tum vellet haberet, comparavit etiam quamplurimos ejusdem gentis 
Gallicse, ex quibus quosdam infantes in eodem monasterio edoceri 
imperavit et subsequente tempore ad monachicum habitum sub- 
levari." — Asser (ed. Wise), p. 62. 



1^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iv. skin, and eider-down and whalebone, and ship-ropes 
iEifred. of whale-skin or seal -skin. Othere's cruise had 
878-901. been along the western coast northward from Hal- 
goland ; and in his longing " to try how far that 
country lay to the north, and whether any lived 
north of the waste," he had done a feat of seaman- 
ship which found no rival till the days of the Tudors, 
by rounding the North Cape and penetrating into 
the bay of Archangel, the then country of "the 
Beormas." " Thither he went chiefly, besides his 
craving to see the country, on account of the wal- 
ruses, because they have very noble bone in their 
teeth, some of which they brought to the king." 
Wulfstan's was a less daring cruise, though it told 
T^lfred of the Baltic and its huge rivers and the 
strange customs among the tribes of the " East- 
land," where " there are many burhs, and in each is 
a king, and there is much honey and fish, and the 
king and the richest men drink mares' milk, and the 
poor and the slaves drink mead." ' But both helped 
y^lfred to realize the lands from which his assailants 
came — lands where, as he notes, " the Engle dwelt be- 
fore they came hither to this country," and the far- 
reaching energy of the men who had pushed to Nova 
Zembla and the Neva before swooping upon Britain. 
Alfred's With all this restless activity yElfred was a thor- 
ough man of business, careful of detail, industrious, 
methodical. Each hour of the day had its appointed 
task; there was the same order in the division of his 
revenue and in the arrangement of his court. The 
more definite organization which the court, the per- 
sonal following of the monarch, was taking marked 

' See Alfred's insertion in his "Orosius." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 17, 

the steady development of the monarchy. It is now chap, iv. 
that we see coming into view the great officers who jsifred. 
were to play so prominent a part in after politics : sts^oi. 
the Horse-Thegn, or Constable ; ' the Cup-Thegn," 
or Butler, whose rank may be seen from the fact 
that the office' was held by the father of Osburga, 
i^thelwulf's first wife and the mother of Alfred; 
and the H order, or Treasurer/ The last of these 
was fast rising into importance as the growth of 
the royal revenue enabled Alfred to enlarge more 
and more the sphere of his expenditure. His 
budget is the first royal budget we possess ; and 
though the fact that the national expenses were 
still in the main defrayed by local means renders 
any comparison of it with a modern budget impos- 
sible, it is still of interest as indicating the wide 
range of public activity which even now was open 
to an English king.' 

A sixth of the royal income was devoted to what ^Jfi-fd's 

. . . . . budget, 

would be called the military and civil services. 
Though the main cost of war had not as yet fallen 
on the State, since the fighting man was bound to 
serve without pay, and provide his own arms and 
supplies," while works of fortification were a burden 
on buhr and township,' the new course of warfare 
with the Danes had already thrown some expenses 
on the royal hoard, for it can only have been from 
his own resources that Alfred drew the means of 
building the " long ships " which formed the nucleus 

' Ecgwulf was King's Horse-Thegn in 897. — Eng. Chron. a. 897. 

^ Sigewulf Pincerna in 892. — Cod. Dip. 320. 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 4, 5. 

■• ".^Ifric thesaurarius " in 892. — Cod. Dip. 320. 

^ Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 65-67. 

^ Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 220, note 3. '' Ibid. i. 108. 



ly^ THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. of his fleet, or of maintaining their Frisian crews. 
jEifred. Civil administration was still more a matter of local 
878-901. expenditure, while justice was one of the most lu- 
crative sources of the royal revenue ; but the hoard 
had to defray the cost of the household itself, the 
privy purse of the king, and the pay of his officers 
and thegns. Another sixth of the royal funds was 
devoted to public works, with such expenses as 
those involved In the restoration of London and 
its walls, or in the bringing of workmen and arti- 
ficers from foreign lands ; while as large a sum was 
devoted to what we may roughly term the diplo- 
matic services and foreign affairs, though under 
this head we must include the reception and en- 
tertainment of the strangers who thronged the 
court, as w^ell as the expenses incurred by the 
king's envoys and negotiators. The public ser- 
vices, public works, and diplomacy thus formed the 
main branches of Alfred's expenditure. An eighth 
of his revenue, however, was devoted to the relief 
of the poor, and another eighth to education, to his 
literary enterprises, the books which he distributed 
to various churches, and mainly, no doubt, to the 
maintenance of the palace school. The remainder 
formed the ecclesiastical side of his budget, half of 
it going to the two monasteries founded by the 
king at Shaftesbury and Athelney, half to religious 
houses In other parts of the realm, such as that 
which he was raising at Winchester, as well as in 
gifts to abbeys among the Welsh, in Ireland, and 
even in Brittany and Gaul. Gifts such as these had 
no doubt a political as well as a religious end, for in 
all these quarters it was needful for y^lfred to find 
friends in the strife that he looked for with the Dane. 



iii 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jyc 

That resistance to the pirates was a matter not chap.iv. 
only of English but of European concern was as Alfred, 
clear to Alfred as to y^thelwulf, and at the end of sts^oi. 
his life we find him striving to take up again the ^7^^^>j 
threads of his father's policy, and opening a system for^'^n 
of alliances which was to be carried out by his suc- 
cessors. The counts who were now rising up in 
Flanders were, through their hold upon the Scheldt 
from which the Danish squadrons had so often is- 
sued, among the most important of Alfred's neigh- 
bors ; and with the marriage of his younger daughter 
^Ifthryth to Baldwin the Second,' began that close 
political and industrial connection between England 
and the Low Countries, which has through so long 
a course of centuries influenced the fortunes of both. 
The connection was no doubt due to Judith, the 
daughter of Charles the Bald, who, after her two 
former marriages with y^thelwulf and yEthelbald, 
recrossed the Channel to become the wife of Bald- 
win Iron-arm, the first Count of Flanders, and the 
mother by him of this Baldwin the Second, while as 
Alfred's step-mother and sister-in-law she probably 
maintained relations with the English court which 
at last brought about the marriage of ^Ifthryth. 
It is only in this marriage, however, and the cease- 
less intercourse with the Papal court, to which he 
seems to have sent money and gifts every year, that 
we can find indications of Alfred's foreign policy. 

His main work had, in fact, to be done nearer ^(/'-^'^ 

and 

home. To the westward he had to deal with the Britain. 
North Welsh, whom he had severed from the Danes 
by the interposition of English Mercia, but whose 
hostility remained a danger hardly less than that 
' Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (ed. Hardy), i. 193. 



1^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IV. from the heathen. From the first, however, his pol- 
vEifred. icy ill this quarter was served by divisions amongst 
878-901. the Welsh themselves. During the early years of 
■ his reign the house of Roderic the Great, which re- 
mained the dominant power among them, still main- 
tained its friendship with the Northmen; but the 
petty chieftains, whose freedom it threatened, pre- 
ferred the distant supremacy of Wessex to the 
nearer rule of the house of Roderic, and in 885 the 
kings of Demetia and Brecknock, with the princes 
of Gwent, owned Alfred as their lord, in exchange 
for his pledge of defence against their enemy.' Ten 
years later the war with Hasting widened into a 
war with the northern Welshmen, and in 897 the 
submission of the house of Roderic at the close of 
the strife left all North Wales subject to the king. 
Though we know less of his diplomacy in the States 
to the northward of the Danelaw, we can see that 
yElfred was busy both with Bernicia and the king- 
dom of the Scots. The establishment of the Dane- 
law in Mid-Britain, the presence of the pirates in 
Caithness and the Hebrides, made these States his 
natural allies ; for, pressed as they were by the 
Wikings alike from the north and from the south, 
their only hope of independent existence lay in the 
help of Wessex. Of the first State we know little. 
The wreck of Northumbria had given freedom to 
the Britons of Strath-Clyde, to whom the name of 
Cumbrians is from this time transferred. The same 
wreck restored to its old isolation the kingdom of 
Bernicia. Deira formed part of the Danelaw, but 
the settlement of the Danes did not reach beyond 
the Tyne, for Bernicia, ravaged and plundered as it 
' Asser (ed. Wise), p. 49. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, 177 

had been, still remained English, and governed, as it chap, iv. 
would seem, by the stock of its earlier kings. The Alfred, 
weakness of this State drew it to Alfred's side ; and sts^oi. 
we know that the Bernician ruler, Eadwulf of Bam- 
borough, was yElfred's friend.' 

The same dread of the Danes drew to him the TheMng- 

. aom of the 

kingdom of the Scots. The Scot kmgdom, which Scots. 
at its outset lurked almost unseen among the lakes 
of Argyle, now embraced the whole of North Brit- 
ain, from Caithness to the Firths, for the very name 
of the Picts had disappeared at a moment when the 
power of the Picts seemed to have reached its 
height. The Pictish kingdom had risen fast to 
greatness after the victory of Nectansmere in 685. 
In the century which followed Ecgfrith's defeat, its 
kings reduced the Scots of Dalriada from nominal 
dependence to actual subjection; the annexation of 
Angus and Fife carried their eastern border to the 
sea, while to the south their alliance with the North- 
umbrians in the warfare which both wasfed on the 
Welsh extended their bounds on the side of Cum- 
bria or Strath-Clyde. But the hour of Pictish great- 
ness was marked by the extinction of the Pictish 
name. In the midst of the ninth century the direct 
line of their royal house came to an end, and the 
under-king of the Scots of Dalriada, Kenneth Mac- 
Alpin, ascended the Pictish throne in right of his 
maternal descent." For fifty years more Kenneth 

' Sim. Durh., Hist. S. Cuthberti (Twysden, p. 73). Ealdred, Ead- 
wulf s son, "erat dilectus regi Edwardo, sicut et pater suus Eadulfus 
dilectus fuit regi Elfredo." 

^ The most complete account of Pictish history during this ob- 
scure period is given by Skene in his '' Celtic Scotland," i. cap. vi. 
Kenneth's accession was in 844. 

12 



1^8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^iv. and his successors remained kings of the Picts. At 
Alfred, the moment we have reached, however, the title 
878-901. passed suddenly away, the tribe which had given its 
chief to the throne gave its name to the realm, and 
" Pict-land " disappeared from history to make room 
first for Alban or Albania, and then for "the land 
of the Scots.'" With these internal revolutions its 
English neighbors had little concern. But a com- 
mon suffering drew the new monarchy in the north 
to the new monarchy which was rising in the south, 
for the storm of invasion had broken more roughly 
over Alban than over England itself. Shattered by 
a strife in which its northern and western districts 
had become almost independent, and menaced with 
the danger of actual extinction, it was natural that the 
kingdom of the Scots should look for friendship, if not 
for actual succor, to the West Saxons and their king. 
Alfred's The strife, however, for which this diplomacy was 

death. , ^ , i i i i 

preparmg the way, was to be wrought by hands 
other than the king's. Hardly four years, in fact, 
had passed since the triumph over Hasting when 
the " stillness " he had sighed for came to him. 
v^lfred died on the 28th of October, 901. "So 
long as I have lived," he wrote, as life was closing 
about him, " I have striven to live worthily." It 
is this height and singleness of purpose, this con- 
centration of every faculty on the noblest aim, that 
lifts Alfred out of the narrow bounds of Wessex ; 
for if the sphere of his action seems too small to 

* Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 335. The first instance of the use of 
"Scotti " for any inhabitants of " Pict-land " proper seems to be in 
877. — Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 328. "Pictavia" becomes "Alba- 
nia" from 889.— Ibid. 335. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i ^g 

justify a comparison of him with the few whom the chap. iv. 
world owns as its greatest men, he rises to their .aiifred. 
level in the moral grandeur of his life. And it is sts^oi. 
this that still hallows his memory among English- 
men. He stands, indeed, in the forefront of his 
race, for he is the noblest as he is the most com- 
plete embodiment of all that is great, all that is 
lovable in the English temper, of its practical en- 
ergy, its patient and enduring force, of the reserve 
and self-control that give steadiness and sobriety 
to a wide outlook and a restless daring, of its tem- 
perance and fairness, its frankness and openness, its 
sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its 
deep and reverent religion. Religion, indeed, was 
the groundwork of Alfred's character. His temper 
was instinct with piety. Everywhere, throughout 
his writings that remain to us, the name of God, 
the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic 
adoration. But of the narrowness, the want of pro- 
portion, the predominance of one quality over an- 
other, which commonly goes with an intensity of 
religious feeling or of moral purpose, he showed not 
a trace. He felt none of that scorn of the world 
about him which drove the nobler souls of his day 
to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by 
sickness and constant pain, not only did his temper 
take no touch of asceticism, but a rare geniality, a 
peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color 
and charm to his life. He had the restless outlook 
of the artistic nature, its tenderness and suscepti- 
bility, its quick apprehension of unseen danger, its 
craving for affection, its sensitiveness to wrong. It 
was with himself rather than with his reader that 
he communed, as thought of the foe without or of 



I So 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



878-901. 



CHAP. IV, ingratitude and opposition within, broke the calm 
mmed. pages of Gregory or Boethius ; but the loneliness 
that breathes in such words never begot in him a 
contempt for men or the judgment of men. Nor 
could danger or disappointment check for an hour 
his vivid activity. From one end of his reign to 
the other every power was bent to the work of 
rule. His practical energy found scope for itself 
in a material and administrative restoration of the 
wasted land ; his intellectual energy breathed fresh 
life into education and literature; while his capacity 
for inspiring trust and affection drew the hearts of 
Englishmen to a common centre, and began the up- 
building of a new England. Little by little men 
came to recognize in yElfred a ruler of higher and 
nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had 
it seen a king who lived only for the good of his 
people. Never had it seen a ruler who set aside 
every personal aim to devote himself solely to the 
welfare of those whom he ruled. It was this grand 
self-mastery that won him love and reverence in 
his own day, and it is this that has hallowed his 
memory ever since. " I desire," said the King, " to 
leave to the men that come after me a remembrance 
of me in ^ood works." His aim has been more than 
fulfilled. His memory has come down to us with a 
living distinctness through the mists of exaggeration 
and legend which time gathered round it. The in- 
stinct of the people has clung to him with a singular 
affection. The love which he won a thousand years 
ago has lingered round his name from that day to this. 
While every other name of those earlier times has all 
but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that 
of /Elired remains familiar to every English child. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE HOUSE OF ALFRED. 
901-937. 

With the death of vElfred the work for which he Eadward 
had so long prepared passed into the hands of his 
son.' Eadward seems only partially to have shared 
his father's taste for letters ; while his younger 
brother, yEthelweard, mastered both Latin and Eng- 
lish in the palace -school,' Eadward's studies, like 
those of most of the young nobles, were restricted 

^ For Eadward's reign the great authority is the English Chron- 
icle. The portion of this work due to Alfred's pen, or written un- 
der his supervision, probably ends in 891 (Earle, Parallel Chron. 
Intr. xv.-xvii.), but from 891 to Eadward's death in 924 the annals 
are carried on by a writer of singular force. Of the years from 894 to 
897 Earle says, " This is the most remarkable piece of writing in the 
whole series of Chronicles. It is a warm, vigorous, earnest narra- 
tive, free from the rigidity of the other annals, full of life and orig- 
inality. Compared with that passage every other piece of prose, 
not in these Chronicles merely, but throughout the whole range of 
extant Saxon literature, must assume a secondary rank." — Parallel 
Chron. Intr. xvi. But the years that follow, though told with less 
warmth and fulness, are told in the same spirit. From 901 to 910, 
indeed, the narrative is scanty; but from 910 to 924 "we have a 
steady, regular, well-written narrative, homogeneous and unmixed 
in matter, like the head-piece of this section, and unlike all the rest 
of the Chronicle. It is all sieges and battles, and fortifications and 
garrisons, and surrenders and armed pacifications. It is a model of 
uniformity, both in matter and manner." — Earle, Parallel Chron. 
Intr. xviii. 

"^ " In qua schola utriusque linguae libri, Latinae scilicet et Saxoni- 
cae, assidue legebantur." — Asser (Wise), p. 43. 



1 82 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARv. to books and songs in his own tongue/ But he 
The was ah-eady famous as a warrior who had rivalled 
jEifred. the glory of ^thelred in the storm of the pirate 
90^937. camp on the Colne as well as in the victory of But- 
tington ; and with his father's warlike ardor he in- 
herited his political capacity. Like yElfred, he was 
'able to set aside for years the dreams of mere war- 
l^e enterprise, and his earlier reign, though troubled 
for a while by the revolt of a claimant of his throne, 
was in the main a time of peace. The failure of 
their last attack had left the English Danes little 
minded to quarrel with Wessex, while the strength 
of their Wiking allies was thrown for some years 
into the strife on the other side of the Channel, 
where Hrolf was establishing himself in the valley 
of the Seine. The peace, indeed, was far from being- 
unbroken. Alfred's death had revived the question 
of the succession; the order established under yEthel- 
wulf, by which his sons followed one another to the 
exclusion of their children, was now exhausted; and 
it can only have been by a decision of the Wite- 
nasemot that the children of yEthelwulf's elder sons 
were set aside and the royal stock settled in the 
descendants of Alfred, the youngest. That this 
decision expressed the national will was shown at 
Eadward's accession. When his cousin, yElthelwald, 
King ^thelred's son, rose to claim the crown, he 
found himself without support, and forced to fly 
from Wessex."" The shelter which he found among 

' He and his sister ^Ifthryth, who married Count Baldwin, " et 
psalmos et Saxonicos libros et maxime Saxonica carmina studiose 
didicere." — Asser (Wise), p. 43. 

' E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 901. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 13^ 

the Danes of Northumbria, and his acceptance as char v. 
their king, marks the first step in that union of The 
Danes and EngHshmen which was to be the work Alfred, 
of the coming century; and the impression of this 90^7937 
must have been strengthened when, in 905, he moored 
off the eastern coast and roused the Danes of East 
Anorlia to follow him in an attack on Wessex/ Ead- 
ward, however, anticipated the blow by appearing 
with an army on the Ouse ; and the fall of yEthel- 
wald in a fight with the Kentish division of this 
force ended the war. The Wedmore Frith was re- 
newed at Ittingford in 906,' and Wessex enjoyed 
four years more of undisturbed tranquillity.' 

That Eadward's patience, however, by no means Kmgof 
implied any abandonment of yElfred's policy, above saxom. 

^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 905. 

^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 906. 

^ For this period the earlier Enghsh Chronicle of Winchester is 
largely supplemented by a Chronicle drawn up at Worcester (that 
known as Tiber. B. iv. of the Cotton Collection, and the D of Mr. 
Earle. — Parallel Chron. Intr. xxxix. etc.). What distinguishes this 
Worcester Chronicle is a large insertion of northern annals, begin- 
ning in 737 ; the earlier of which may be due (Stubbs, Archseol. 
Journ. No. 75, p. 236, note) to Bishop Werfrith of Worcester, one of 
u3ilf red's literary assistants, who sate from 873 to 91 5. But for ^thel- 
fiaed's campaigns we have, inserted, a wholly independent Mercian 
Chronicle, ending with her death, and equal in fulness of detail to 
the parallel Winchester Chronicle, which restricts itself to Eadward's 
exploits and omits those of his sister. There are difficulties, indeed, 
in reconciling these accounts chronologically. The death of ^thel- 
fiaed is placed in the Mercian Chronicle at 918 ; in the Winchester 
Chronicle at 922. The latter is probably the more correct, for we 
find Leicester, which, according to the Mercian Chronicle, had sub- 
mitted to the lady in 918, still Danish, and leading a Danish here 
against her brother in 921 ; and as the preceding dates, at any rate 
from -i^thelred's death, are linked in series with this final one, I have 
ventured to place them also four years later than the year assigned 
to them by the Worcester chronicler. 



184 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP.V. all, of his plans for a national union, was shown in a 
The change of the royal style. With v^lfred the connec- 
JEifred. tion of liis two realms had remained to the last a 
80^937. purely personal connection. He had been Mercian 
king among the Mercians ; he had remained West- 
Saxon king among the men of Wessex. But, from 
the first moment of his reign, Eadward showed his 
resolve to look on the two dominions he ruled as a 
single realm, and to blend their peoples in some sort 
into a single people. He is no longer king of the 
West Saxons or of the Mercians, but " King of the 
Angul-Saxons.'" The title is no doubt a transitional 
one ; it represents the effort of the king to look on 
the Mercian Engle and the Saxon Gewissas as a 
single folk rather than any actual fusion of the one 
with the other; we know, indeed, that the separate 
life of Mercia under ^thelred and ^thelfiaed re- 
mained undisturbed for all the change in the royal 
style. But the change was none the less a signifi- 
cant one. If no such people as " the Anglo-Saxons " 
existed, or could be made to exist, the effort to create 
such a people had its issues in an after-time, when 
not only West Saxon and Mercian, but every man 
from the Forth to the Channel should be looked on 
by his king, and regard himself, as one of an English 
people." 

' " Angul-Saxonum rex " is his common description in the char- 
ters of his reign, a description almost confined, as we shall see, to 
Eadward. See Kemble, Cod. Dip. 333, 335, 1080, 1083, 1084, 1090, 
1091, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095, 1096. In a charter of 901, his first year 
(Cod. Dip. 1078), his "Angul-Saxonum rex" explains itself by an 
after-phrase, " Omnium judicio sapientum Gewissorum et Mercen- 
sium." 

^ It may be well to note that the word " Angul-Saxon " is of purely 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



185 



Nor did the king's policy of inaction extend to chap. v. 
his Mercian realm, for it must have been with his The 
sanction or at his command that the Mercian rulers jEifred. 
took at this moment what proved to be a first step in 90^7^37 
the final strus^gle with the Danelaw. In the Peace - — 

'=''=' . . Chester 

of Wedmore one of the main aims of Alfred had rehcut. 
been to cut off the Danelaw from the Welsh ; and 
he had secured this by retaining all of the older 
Mid-England westward, as was roughly said, of the 
Watling Street, as a new English Mercia. But in 
its northern portion the barrier was a weak one ; for 
the extremity of the tract which now formed the 
Mercian ealdordom — the northern part, that is, of 
our modern Cheshire — was little more than a strip 
of land across which the Dane of the Five Boroughs 
could easily push to call his old allies on the Welsh 
border to arms. To strengthen this barrier had 
been the purpose of its rulers from the first. At its 
weakest point lay the ruined city of Chester — to 
whose military importance the recent harborage of 
Hasting within its walls had probably drawn their 
attention. Commanding, as it did, the passage over 
the lower Dee, and the main roads from Mid-Eng- 
land to North Wales, or from South England into 
the wild country which had once been Cumbria, 
Chester furnished also a port where a fleet could be 
stationed to hold the mastery of the Irish Channel, 
and cut off the English Danelaw from the Danes 

political coinage, and that no man is ever known, save in our own 
day, to have called himself " an Anglo-Saxon." The phrase, too, 
applied strictly to the Engle of Mercia and the Saxons of Wessex, 
not to any larger area. For the general use of " Engle " and " Sax- 
on," I must refer my readers to Mr. Freeman's exhaustive treatise, 
Norm. Conq. i. app. A. 



SOl-937. 



1 86 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.v. of the Irish coast. Nor was it hard to restore it to 
The its older strength. Ruined and deserted as the town 

jEuTed. had lain since its surrender to ^thelfrith in 607/ 
the military strength of its position was such as could 
be little harmed by time and neglect. The huge 
trench which severed the block of sandstone on which 
it stood from the rest of the higher ground, the mas- 
sive walls which girt in its site, the marshy level and 
the river-course which formed an outer barrier round 
them, were still ready to hand ; and in their " re- 
newal " of the town' in 907 Ealdorman ^thelred 
and his wife seem to have done little more than eive 
protection to the passage across the Dee, by raising 
a mound with a stockade or fort on its summit in 
the low ground beside the bridge, and by extending 
the older walls in this quarter to the river. It was 
probably to aid in the repeopling of the town that 
a secular house of the Mercian saint, Werburgh, was 
founded in the northeastern quarter of the city : and 
the security of the little settlement may have been 
provided for by a custom which we find existing in 
later days, that bound every hide in the shire about 
it to furnish a man at its town-reeve's call to repair 
walls and bridge.' 

Outbreak Small as the settlement was, the end of the Mer- 

Danes. ciau rulcrs was gained by their seizure of the town, 



^ It was still a "waste Chester" when Hasting took refuge there. 
— E. Chron. a. 894 ; Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), p. 113. 

" This is only recorded in two of the later copies of the Chronicle, 
Mr. Earle's B and C, at 907. " Her waes Ligceaster geedneowad." 
— Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), p. 120. 

^ It was only by slow degrees that the new town extended itself 
over the ruins of the old. St. Werburgh's house stood alone in its 
northeastern quarter ; and only the southern half of the city, where 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jgy 

for the shortest road between Wales and the Dane- chap. v. 
law was now in their hands. That the check was The 
felt by the Danes was shown by a growing restless- mtel 
ness which broke out at last in open warfare. A 907^37 
raid of the pirates over Mercia in 910' had to be — 
repulsed at Tottenhale by a joint force of Mer- 
cians and West Saxons under Eadward himself, who 
avenged the attack by following the beaten host 
across the border and harrying their land there for 
five weeks." The blow seems to have roused the war- 
like spirit of the whole Danelaw. In 9 1 1 Eadward was 
drawn southward by danger from the sea, where in 
the preceding year a pirate force had landed in the 
Severn and been repulsed with difficulty by the fyrds 
of the neighboring shires. It marks the quiet work 
that had been done in the years of rest which Al- 
fred had gained that Eadward was able to muster a 
hundred ships, and to ride master of the Channel. 
But with his stay in the south Mercia was left to its 
own resources ; and the Northumbrians resolved to 
avenge the losses of their brethren across Trent. A 
" frith " like that of East Anglia had bound them till 
now to Wessex, but this was broken, and setting aside 
the offers of accommodation made by Eadward and 



we find on either side of Bridge Street the churches of St. Bridget 
and St. Michael, can represent the town of ^thelflaed, for yet more 
to the south the church of St. Olaf marks a later extension, which 
can hardly be earlier than the days of Cnut. 

^ E. Chron. (Wore), a. 910. The raid is told in greater detail by 
^thelweard, whose Chronicle, till now a mere version of the Eng- 
lish Chronicle of Winchester, becomes independent from about 
893 to its close in 975. His whole work, however, is all but worth- 
less.' 

^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 910. 



1 88 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARv. his Witenagemot/ the pirate host, under its kings 
The Ecwils and Halfdene, poured ravaging over Mercia. 
jEifred, But, distant as Eadward himself was, his forces were 
90^937. already on the march, and as the Danes fell back 
— loaded with spoil they were overtaken and attacked. 
The English victory was complete, and thousands 
of Danes fell round their two kings on the field. 
Eadward If Ealdormau yEthelred led the host to this tri- 
Thames umph, thc cffort must have been his last; for he 
Valley, ^-^j -^^ 912," and the changes which followed on his 
death told on the whole character of the conflict. 
Within Mercia itself the change was little, for ^thel- 
flsed, who remained its sole governor, had acted 
throughout as joint ruler with yEthelred. But for 
Wessex it was great. The death of yEthelred en- 
abled Eadward to take a new step in the disintegra- 
tion of the shrunken Mercian realm, and he now took 
from Mercia London and Oxford, " and the lands 
that belonged to them " ' — in other words, the lower 
valley of the Thames. The annexation was impor- 
tant, not only as pointing forward to Eadward's 
plans of a yet wider reunion, but as doing away 
with the barrier which yElfred had set between 
Wessex and the Danelaw by the interposition of 
the Mercian ealdormanry. In bringing his border 
into contact with that of the Danelaw, Eadward an- 
nounced that the time of rest was over, and that a 
time of action had begun. His course, however, was 
marked by extreme caution. It was easy to secure 
the line of the Thames by renewing, as Alfred had 
done, the older walls of London, a work of repara- 

' E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 91 1. ^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 912. 

=> Ibid. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 189 

tion which has left its mark everywhere among the (^ha£^v. 
Roman brickwork and masonry; while the deep The 
morasses along the valley of the Lea still offered m^^&a. 
a fair check to any attack from the Danes in Essex. 90^1^37 
But at the point where the boundary of the Dane- — 
law struck to the northwest from the Lea, across the 
bare uplands of the Chilterns, the way lay open to 
an inroad, and it was to guard this open ground 
that Eadward seized the ford over the Lea, first by 
a fort or stockaded mound on the northern side of 
the river, between the little streams of the Maran 
and the Beane, and then by a like fort on the south- 
ern bank, two " burhs," which have since grown into 
our Hertford/ The bend of its present shire-line 
eastward along the upper course of the Stort, and so 
round by the crest of the Chilterns, may represent 
the land which Eadward took across the line fixed 
by the frith to form a district for his new fortress ; 
but its seizure was not the only sign of a break with 
East Anglia. Essex, shorn as it was of its western 
half along the Thames and the Chilterns, still re- 
mained a part of Guthrum's kingdom; but Ead- 
ward now proceeded to shear away a fresh por- 
tion of it by entering its southern districts with an 
army, and taking post at Maldon on the Blackwater, 
while his men reared a " burh " a little inland, at 
Witham. 

With the erection of this fortress the Danes were Mtheijiced 
thrown back on the valley of the Colne, and cut off watiing 
from all access to the mouths of the Thames or the '^^''^^''• 
Blackwater, while southern Essex passed into Eng- 



E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 913. 



I go THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, 

cju^.v, lish hands. The line of Guthrum's Frith was now, 
The therefore, abandoned, and Eadward's frontier led 
iEifred. from the sea along the valley of the Chelm, straight 
goilgsT. westward to Hertford, and thence along the brink of 
the Thames valley. For the next four years, how- 
ever, the king made no further advance, though he 
was doubtless busy throughout them in organizing 
his later campaigns and in aiding the more active 
enterprise of his sister. While ^thelflaed strength- 
ened her western frontier against any inroad from 
the Welsh by the erection of forts at Scargate and 
Bridgenorth,' she barred any further raids of the 
Danes upon Mercia by firmly establishing herself on 
the flank of the Danelaw, and seizing the line of the 
Watling Street. None of the roads that traversed 
Roman Britain have remained so famous as this 
great line of communication. It stretched from 
London over the chalk downs of Hertfordshire 
through a lonely and thickly wooded country to Ver- 
ulamium, and, descending into the low clay-lands of 
the Ouse at Dunstable, again mounted the North- 
amptonshire slopes at Stony Stratford to pass over 
the clearer tract beyond Towcester into the basin of 
the Trent. From the moment that it stooped to the 
lower ground of central Britain its course was dic- 
tated by the woodland of Arden. It ran closely 
along the edge of this great forest, by the bounds of 
our Leicestershire, and, bending round its northern 
skirt to pass through the narrow gap of open coun- 
try which parted Arden from Cannock Chase, struck 

'■ E. Chron. a. 912. This entry, however, is only preserved in two 
chronicles, Earle's B and C, the older Cott. Tib. A, vi. and B, i., both 
of Worcester orisfin. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. iqj 

over the central water-shed of Britain to Wroxeter, chap. v. 
in the Severn valley. From this point its line seems The 
originally to have been prolonged to the Welsh coast Alfred' 
near Anglesea ; but the size and importance of Ches- qq^^» 
ter under the Roman occupation show that a branch — 
road from Wroxeter to that city must soon have 
come into existence, and along this branch road the 
main stream of traffic, both to Wales and to north- 
western Britain, was from that time directed/ As 
the English conquerors crossed its course, however, 
the track must have sunk for a while into disuse and 
silence. But the strangers were awed by the long 
line that they met so often in their progress, and 
which their fancy associated with the Milky Way, 
whose white line of stars was thrown athwart the 
sky as the white line of the road was thrown athwart 
Britain. In their after-legend it became "the road 
that King Waetla's sons made over England from 
the eastern sea to the sea in the west;" and the 
memory of this long-lost myth lingers in its later 
name of the Watling Street." 

^ For Watling Street see Guest, Origines Celticae, ii. 218 ei seq. 
It is doubtful whether the road from Dover to London can claim 
the name. 

^ The name is, at any rate, as old as Alfred and Guthrum's Frith 
in 897. Their boundary ran from Bedford " upwards on the Ouse 
unto Watling Street." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 153. Flor. Wore. a. 
loi 3, explains the name, " id est, strata quam filii Waetlae regis ab 
orientale mare usque ad occidentale per Angliam straverunt." 
Chaucer, in his " House of Fame," says : 

" So there, quoth he, cast up thine eye. 
See yonder, lo, the galaxie, 
The which men clept the Milky Way, 
For it is white, and some — par fay — 
Y-callin it han Watlinge Street." 



JQ2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP.v. While Eadward was guarding his flank against 
Th^ the East Engle, ^^thelflaed wrought a Hke work for 

^Sred^ Mercia by the fortification of two burhs which com- 

90^937 nianded this road.' The first was Tamworth, whose 
— site marked the point where the new and direct hne 

''ZTd ' to Chester diverged from the older Watling Street. 

Stafford. ^ ^.g^ ^£ g^-Qund (now kuown as the Castle Hill) 
breaks the swampy levels at the junction of the An- 
ker with the Tame ; and a vill of the Mercian kings 
had been established here at an early time, which, 
with the little "worth" that grew up about it, com- 
manded what was then the only practicable passage 
over either river to the plains of the Trent. On this 
rise ^thelflced threw up a huge mound, crowned 
with a fortress, portions of whose brickwork may 
still be seen as one zig-zags up the steep ascent. 
From Tamworth, however, she soon turned to a yet 
more important point. As the road struck to the 
northeast, it entered a narrow pass between the 
heiQ:hts of Cannock Chase and the channel of the 
Trent, across which ran the little stream of the Sow, 
on its way to the greater river. The road crossed 
this stream at a " stone ford," or paved point of pas- 
sage; and in guarding this point by the fortress 
which has grown into our Stafford,' i^thelflaed not 
only blocked all access to the upper Trent, but occu- 
pied what, in the physical state of England at the 
time, was the most important strategical point of 
middle Britain." 



Dr. Guest, however, prefers, I cannot see why, a derivation from 
" gwyddel," the " broken men " or robbers in the woods along its 
course. — Orig. Celt. ii. 234, 235. 

1 E. Chron. (Wore), a. 913. ^ Ibid. 

' Its importance was recognized by the two successive castles 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 1^3 

To the north of Arden the Mercian border was chap. v. 
now fairly secure. Chester blocked all passage over The 
the Dee ; Stafford, all passage along the Trent val- Alfred, 
ley; Tamworth, any march along the older line of qq^^<j 
Watling Street on the upper Severn. But to the ~ 
south of the great forest Mercia still remained acces- on the 
sible by the Fosse Road. The Fosse Way was one '^"' ^^' 
of the two great lines of communication which ran 
athwart Britain from the northeast to the south- 
west. Its course was roughly parallel to that of its 
fellow-road, the Icknield Way,' and it closely resem- 
bled it in character. As the Icknield Way ran along 
the face of the chalk range, from the Gwent of East 
Anglia to the Gwent about Old Sarum, so the Fosse 
Way ran from Lincoln to Bath along the face of the 
oolitic range which stretched across midland Britain 
from the estuary of the Severn to the estuary of the 
Humber.^ Its course thus led direct from Leicester 
into the valley of the Avon, and by the Avon valley 
to the lower Severn and South Wales. It was to 
block this road and secure central Mercia that y^thel- 
flsed turned as soon as she had ended her work on 
the Watling Street.' After erecting a fortress at 
Eddisbury, she chose as her main barrier the settle- 
ment of the Waerings, on a little rise near the slug- 
gish waters of the Avon, about midway along its 
course, and here she fortified the burh which has 
grown into our Waeringawic, or Warwick. For the 

which the Conqueror built here, one in the town itself, the other on 
a more distant height. — Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 318. 

' See Making of England, p. 121. 

^ For the Fosse Way, see Guest, " Four Roman Ways," Orig. Celt, 
ii. 236, 237. 

^ E. Chron. (Wore), a. 914. 

13 



901-937. 



194 "^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. defence of this settlement she reared* between town 
The and river one of those mounds which marked the 
^5red. defensive warfare of the time, and which, stripped as 
it is of every trace of the fortress with which she 
crowned it, and covered with works of far later date, 
still remains to witness to the energy of the lady of 
Mercia. 
EadivarcTs But, though the lincs of Trent and Avon were 
into^Md- alike secure, and the roads to Wales on either side 
Britain. q£ ^j-^gj-j wholly in her hands, ./^thelflsed's caution 
was not yet satisfied, and two years more were spent 
in setting up burhs at Cherbury, Warbury, and 
Runcorn," at the confluence of the Weaver and the 
Dee. Meanwhile, in southern Britain the long- 
delayed contest became more and more imminent 
The king's course was still a slow and cautious one. 
He had cleared his eastern flank by the conquest of 
southern Essex, and secured his border-line in that 
quarter by the burhs at Witham and Hertford. 
But his warfare in the east had probably ended in a 
new frith with the East Anglians ; for after a rest of 
four years we find his advance directed not against 
East Anglia, but against the Danes of Mid-Britain, 
or the Five Boroughs. The nearest of their settle- 
ments lay just northward of the valley of the Thames, 
in the upper valley of the Ouse. Here, in earlier 
days, the house of the Bokings had planted their 
" ham " of Buckingham on the little stream ; and 
since the making of the Danelaw this " ham " had 
been the southernmost of the Danish settlements in 
Mid-Britain ; with Bedford and Huntingdon, in fact, 

' " In fine autumni." — Flor. Wore. i. 123. 
* E. Chron. (Wore), a, 915. 



901-937. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ig^ 

it formed a line of towns, each with its jarl and chap^v. 
army, which held the valley of the Ouse. It was in The 
the hands of Jarl Thurcytel " and his holds " when, ^Sred. 
in 918, Ead ward marched to attack it. A siege of 
four weeks made him its master;' and here, as else- 
where, he built burhs on either side the river to 
guard its passage, as well as to bar any raid upon 
the valley of the Thames. The capture of the town, 
however, was followed by the submission of its jarl 
and its holds; and the severity of the blow was 
shown by a like submission of " almost all the chief 
men that belonged to Bedford, and also many that 
belonged to Northampton." 

Their submission drew the king onward, both to Conquest 
the eastward and to the north. In 919 he marched %riiai'n. 
along the Ouse through the flat meadows of Olney 
upon Bedford,' which offered no resistance, and 
which he guarded by a burh on the southern bank 
of the stream. Two years later, in 921, he pushed 
forward on to the upland of Mid-Britain, and seized 
and fortified the site of the ruined Towcester. 
Meanwhile, he was providing, with his old caution 
against danger, at either end of his long line, by 
erecting fresh fortresses at Maldon in Essex, and at 
Wigmore in our Herefordshire. But, cautious as his 
advance had been, its real import could no longer 
be disguised, and the seizure of Towcester roused 
the Danes of Mid -Britain into action. Not only 
the Danes of Northampton and of Leicester, but the 
whole force of the Five Boroughs made a fierce on- 
set on the burh at Towcester. Fierce as it was, 

» E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 918. 
'^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 919. 



196 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. V. however, it was beaten off by the new townsmen. 

The Eadward hastened to secure the town, which must 

^ured.* have been guarded as yet only by a trench and 

omTo^ stockade, with a wall of stone;' and the presence of 
yui-yo7. ■ • r TV T 1 

— his arms brought about the submission of North- 
ampton, with Jarl Thurfrith and its host, as well as 
the district which obeyed it, a district which stretched 
as far as the Welland. 
Conquest But, while the king was thus pressing on the Five 
^Angha. Boroughs, a far fiercer conflict was raging on his 
flank. The Danes of East Anglia had sprung to 
arms even before their fellow Danes in central Brit- 
ain ; and in this quarter fighting had been going on 
through the whole year. Early in the spring the 
Danes of Huntingdon threw^ themselves fruitlessly 
on the new^ burh at Bedford ; and then, quitting 
Huntingdon, set up a fresh encampment at Temps- 
ford, where they were soon attacked by the English 
fyrd of the neighboring districts. The capture of 
Tempsford, with its king, jarls,' and warriors, gave 
fresh heart to the assailants ; and a force of English- 
men drew^ together from Kent, Surrey, and Essex 
for the siesre of Colchester. Their success was aoain 
complete ; the town was stormed, and its defenders 
slain ; while a counter-raid of the Danes upon Mal- 
don ended in the utter rout of the pirates. It was 
at this moment that the completion of the walls of 
Towcester and the submission of Northampton set 
Eadward free to act in the east. His first blow was 
at the district about the Fens. A few miles' march 
over the flat Ouse country brought him to the spot 

' E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 921. 
^ Togflos and Manna. — Ibid. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. i^j 

where the English village of Godmanchester was chap. v. 
risins: by the ruins of the Roman Durolipons on the The 

,11. 1 1 TTT 1 /^ • ^1 House of 

road that skirted the Wash. On a rise across the Alfred, 
river which was then the " Hunters-down," stood the 901I937. 
fortress which the owners had so lately abandoned 
— a fortress of importance as commanding the pas- 
sage of the Ouse — whose site, as well as those of the 
burh with which Eadward replaced it, are still marked 
by the mounds which rise over the river.' Master of 
the whole Ouse valley, a fresh march of the king to 
Colchester, and his rebuilding of the town, was fol- 
lowed by the sudden submission of all the Danes of 
East Anglia and Essex, as well as of the here which 
found its centre at Cambridge ; and no part of the 
Fen country remained to the Danelaw save the 
northern tract about Stamford. The town stood on 
a stone ford over the Welland, and was one of the 
Five Boroughs, with its twelve lawmen and Danish 
burghers and common land beyond the walls. But 
it submitted when the king and his fyrd marched on 
it in 922 ; and its obedience was secured by a mound 
and fort which Eadward raised over against it on 
the opposite bank of the river, in what became a 
southern burh of lesser size.' 

What had made the king's triumph in Mid-Britain ^t^^eifl^Bd 
so easy and complete was, to a great extent, no doubt, the Five 
the energy of his sister in the west. While the Eng- °^°^'^^^' 
lish shire-levies cleared East Anglia on one flank 
of his advance, y^thelflaed was mastering the Five 
Boroughs on the other. The march of Eadward on 
Northampton had, in fact, been made possible by the 

* E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 921. 

* E. Chron, (Winch.), a. 922, 



901-937. 



igS THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. triumphs of the Mercian host in the valley of the 
The Trent. As the river curves from the heights of Can- 

^ifred. nock Chasc to the eastward, it receives the water of 
two important affluents from the north and south. 
The Derwent flows down to it from the crags of the 
Peak, while the Soar wanders to it through the grassy 
levels of our Leicestershire. On one of these rivers 
the earlier English conquerors had planted their 
settlement of North-weorthig, w^hose position in the 
waste among the wild animals of the chase was 
marked by the new name it had received from the 
Danes, the name of Deora-by, or Derby/ Under 
the Danes the place became one of the Five Bor- 
oughs round which the Danelaw of Mid -Britain 
grouped itself, and it was the first of the five to bear 
iEthelflccd's attack. In the August of 917 it passed 
into her hands,^ and in 918 she marched up the val- 
ley on her other flank, that of the Soar, to attack the 
second of the Five Boroughs, Leicester. Again her 
attack was successful, and within the walls of her 
own conquest she is said to have heard of the sub- 
mission of York." 

Mid' The news of this last triumph, however, had hard- 

conqiTered\j rcachcd Eadward when it was followed by the 

news of ^thelflasd's death.^ But the blow came 

too late to save the Danelaw. Only two of the Five 

Boroughs, indeed, now remained unconquered ; and 

» ^thelweard, a. 870, lib. iv. c. 2. 

*'' E. Chron. (Wore), a. 917. 

^ E. Chron. (Wore), a. 918, says of the Yorkmen : " Some gave her 
pledge, some bound themselves with oath, that they would be at her 
reding" (command). 

* Eadward was at Stamford at this time. E. Chron. (Winch.), 
a. 922. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. jgg 

Eadward's siege of the first of these, Nottingham, chap. v. 
completed the work of the year. The town stood The 
on the bend of the Trent, a few miles eastward of ^Sed. 
the confluence of the Derwent and the Soar. It 001^937 
was here that the road from the south crossed the — 
great river, for further along its course the marshes 
of Axholme hindered all passage ; and the impor- 
tance of the place had been shown at the very out- 
set of the Danish wars, when its seizure by the 
pirates foiled the efforts of ^thelred and y^ If red 
to save the north from their grasp. In size and 
wealth it was probably, with Lincoln, the most im- 
portant of the Five Boroughs, while as a strategical 
point it was more important than any ; for it com- 
manded the navigation of the Trent, while it was 
the key alike of Northumbria and central Britain. 
The closing of Eadward's forces upon Nottingham' 
in 922 was thus the crisis of the war. The town 
yielded, and was secured, for the while, by a fortress 
on the southern bank of the river; while the king 
reaped the fruits of his success in the submission of 
the whole Mercian Danelaw, for Lincoln, whose fate 
is not mentioned, no doubt submitted on the fall of 
Nottingham. 

With the clearing of the Trent valley the con- Theprin- 
quest of Mid - Britain was complete. Guthrum's personal 
kingdom and the Five Boroughs had alike bowed 
to Eadward's sword. But the work of conquest was 
far from being the only work of Eadward during 
these memorable years. It is, indeed, the adminis- 
trative reconstruction which went hand in hand with 

* E. Chron. (Winch,), a. 922. 



alleptance. 



200 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. the king's campaign that accounts for the slowness 
The and caution of his advance. How firmly he clung 
aiifred. to the idea which his title of " King of the Anglo- 
9oiu937. Saxons " embodies, the idea of a single people ruled 
' directly by a single king, was shown in his dealing 

with the Mercian ealdormanry. On the death of 
^thelflaed the last traces of Mercian independence 
were suppressed ; the girl whom his sister had left 
behind her was sent to a nunnery; and the king- 
dom, with its Welsh dependencies, brought under 
Eadward's direct government.' The districts of the 
conquered Danelaw were in the same way brought 
into the general realm ; but they were brought into 
it in a very different way from Mercia. The condi- 
tions of the struggle, indeed, were giving a wholly 
new character to the relations of the people towards 
its rulers. The war had violently hastened forward 
a revolution which had long been silently changing 
the whole structure of English society. Even at the 
time of their first settlement in Britain the invaders 
had passed beyond the stage of merely personal 
right — the stage in which freedom, law, and govern- 
ment are regarded as inherent in the freeman him- 
self, and in which a share in the common land of the 
tribe falls to the share of the freeman because he is 
free. Though traces of this older personal bond re- 
mained in the gathering of the kin in their separate 
villages, as in the allotment of the soil to the heads 
of families, yet land had even then become the insep- 

' "And all the people of the land of Mercia . . . submitted to him ; 
and the kings of the North Welsh, Howel and Cledauc and Jeoth- 
wel and all the North- Welsh people sought him to be their lord." 
— E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 922. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 2OI 

arable accompaniment of the freeman, the badge and chap, v. 
test of his freedom : he was a freeman because he The 
was a land-owner.' But it was long before the rela- Strll 
tion of the freeman to the land wholly obliterated 90^1^37 
the older conception of personal freedom. In ear- — 
lier English history the small holder and the big 
holder stood equal in law-moot or in witenagemote, 
and even the landless man might choose what lord 
he would. But at the close of the Danish wars we 
find a new organization of the people almost com- 
plete. The tendency towards personal dependence, 
and towards a social organization based on personal 
dependence, had received an overpowering impulse 
from the strife. The long insecurity of a century 
of warfare had driven the ceorl, the free tiller of the 
soil, to seek protection more and more from the 
wealthier land -owner or thegn beside him. The 
poorer freeman " commended " himself to a lord 
who promised aid ; and as the price of this aid sur- 
rendered his freehold, to receive it back as a fief 
laden with condition of military service. Hence- 
forth his lord owns the land he tills ; he is his leader 
to the host ; he is the lord of the court at which 
he seeks for justice. The military, the judicial, the 
political organization of the people had thus become 
inseparably linked to the ownership of land.' 

How quickly the principle of personal allegiance nsmflu- 
to a lord of land widened into a general theory of "EngHsk 
dependence we see from the changes it brought ^^"^s^^^P- 
about in the English kingship. Whatever bonds 
of the older tribal sort might link the children of 

* Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 194. 

" Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 217-222. 



901-937. 



202 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. Alfred to the men of their own Wessex, it was only 
The as possessors of the soil, as lords of the land, that 

^Sred!^ they could claim the obedience of Mercian or North- 
umbrian. To the tribal character of the kingship, 
which blended the king with those whom he ruled, 
was thus added a territorial character in which he 
stood wholly apart from them, and in which the rela- 
tion was no longer one of traditional loyalty, but of 
actual subjection. Still more was this the case with 
the conquered Dane. No tie of traditional loyalty 
bound the northern settler on the Ouse or the Trent 
to the kings who had struck him down. The only 
possible tie could be that of acknowledging the new 
' master as a lord, and claiming his " peace " or pro- 
tection in exchange for allegiance. It is thus that 
the conquest of the Danelaw was followed by the 
earliest instances of those oaths of allegiance which 
mark the substitution of a personal dependence on 
the kins: as lord for the older relation of the freeman 
to the king of his race. 

The oath Eadward had already proposed to the witan of his 

allegiance, own Wcsscx,' that for the maintenance of the public 
peace they should " be in that fellowship in which the 
kine was, and love that which he loved, and shun that 
which he shunned, both on sea and land ;" and this 
principle of personal allegiance he applied to his new 
conquests. As he pushed over the country, the Dan- 
ish hosts who yielded to him swore to hold him for 
their lord, to be one with him, to will all that he 
willed, to keep peace with all in his peace. At Buck- 
ingham, Jarl Thurcytel "sought to him to be his 



' Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 163. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 203 

lord, and all the holds, and almost all the chief men chap^v. 
who owed obedience to Bedford." Farther north. The 
" Thurferth the Jarl and the captains and all the iE^fred. 
army which owed obedience to Northampton as far 90^1^37 
north as the Welland . . . sought him to be their lord — 
and protector." At Huntingdon, all who were left 
of the Danes " sought his peace and protection." 
Finally, " all the army among the East Anglians 
swore union with him that they would do all he 
would, and would observe peace towards all to which 
the king should grant peace, both by sea and land ; 
and the army which owed obedience to Cambridge 
chose him specially to be their lord and protector, 
and confirmed it with oaths, even as he then decreed 
it."' In this way no change was made in the actual 
organization of the country within the Danelaw. 
Its jarls, its holds, were left gathered round their 
towns as before. But they had taken Eadward for 
their lord, and bound themselves by a bond of alle- 
giance to him. As the English could not be less 
closely connected with their king than the Danes, 
such an allegiance soon spread beyond the limits of 
the Danelaw, and became the bond of the nation at 
large. In Eadmund's day all men swore to be faith- 
ful to the king as a man is faithful to his lord, loving 
what he loves, and shunning what he shuns." The 
king has, in fact, become the lord ; the freeman has 
become the king's man ; the public peace, or observ- 
ance of the customary right by man towards man, 
has become the king's peace, the observance of which 



E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 918, 921. 
Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 252. 



204 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. jg (jue to the will of the lord, and the breach of which 

The is a personal offence against him. 
iEifred. The caution of Eadward, however, in his advance 
90^937. over the Danelaw, was dictated not only by these 
^, T~ , administrative difficulties, but by a sense of the mili- 

Eaaward _ ... 

and the tary difficulties of his task. Fight his way onward 
as he might, and firmly as he secured every step in 
his path by mound and burh, he knew that the 
Danes of Mid-Britain were still far from being defi- 
nitely conquered. After all the triumphs of .Ead- 
ward and of his son, we shall see the Five Boroughs 
break out in a fierce revolt against their successor, 
and for a while drive the West Saxons back over 
the Watling Street. With the existing military sys- 
tem, in fact, it was impossible to bridle the Danes by 
efficient garrisons, while to bring them to a content- 
ed acquiescence in English rule was necessarily a 
work of time. We can hardly doubt that it was a 
sense of this danger in his rear, as well as of the for- 
midable nature of the work to be done in the north, 
which made Eadward halt for a while at the Trent. 
Instead of a direct march on Northumbria he turned 
to a distant line of operations, whose aim seemed 
rather that of defence than of attack. From any 
direct onset of the Northumbrian Danes on his front 
the king was nearly secure. The fortresses at Not- 
tingham and Stafford, with the other burhs on their 
flank and rear, made a passage of the Trent difficult, 
if not impossible. But on his northwestern flank 
the king felt more open to attack. Not only might 
the Danes of Northumbria break over the western 
moors by the old Roman road from York to the 
Ribble, to call the North Welsh to arms, but the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 205 

Ostmen from Ireland might, by a short march across chap, v. 
the same wild tract, bring aid to their brethren in The 
Northumbria. It was, indeed, this constant succor iEiired. 
from Ireland which made the after-conquest of the 9011^37 
northern Danelaw so long and arduous a task : and 
* we can hardly doubt that it was a sense of the need 
of isolating Northumbria from both Welshmen and 
Ostmen, ere he could safely attack it, which guided 
the work of Eadward in the northwest. 

In seizins: the estuaries of the Dee and the Mer- ^. ^" 

o Jorlresses 

sey by her burhs at Chester and Runcorn, ^thel- ij^he 
flaed had closed the natural landing-places by which 
the Ostmen could make their way to York ; but the 
king aimed at barring their path by fortresses which 
comimanded every road across the moors. While, 
with his own host, therefore, he set about the build- 
ing of a town at Thelwall in 923, he sent a Mercian 
force to occupy the old Roman town of Mancunium. 
To the north of the estuary of the Mersey a trian- 
gular mass of hill and moorland juts out from the 
Pennine range towards the sea, a tract whose slopes 
and stream-valleys are now the homes of -a mighty 
industry, but which then was silent and desolate.' 
On the southern side of this tract its waters gath- 
ered together at a point where the road over the 
moors from Eboracum came down upon the plain; 
and at this point had grown up, under the Roman 
occupation, the town of Mancunium. Since yEthel- 
frith's day the town had doubtless lain in ruin ; but 
life was probably already flowing back to a site 
marked out for the dwelling of man, when in 923 

^ It still formed part of Northumbria. E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 923. 
" Manchester in Northumbria." 



2o6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.v. Eadward renewed and "manned" the walls of Man- 
The Chester/ In the following year he linked these out- 
^mSel lying strongholds with his general line, by a burh at 
90^937. Bakewell, on the upper Derwent among the hills of 
— the Peak, a point about midway between Manches- 
ter and the new English conquest of Derby, while 
he strengthened the key of his position on the Trent 
by throwing a bridge over the river at Nottingham, 
and securing it by a second mound and stockade on 
the southern bank." 
Wessex EfHcicnt as these fortresses were for purposes of 

and the -^ . . ^ , 

north, defence, they were as eincient for purposes ot attack ; 
for from Manchester, or Bakewell, or Nottingham 
alike the forces of Eadward could close upon York, 
whether by the western moors or through the fast- 
nesses of the Peak, or by the marshy levels along 
the Don. Eadward seems, in fact, to have been 
preparing for a more formidable struggle than any 
he had as yet undertaken, a struggle not with the 
Danes of Northumbria only, but with the leagued 
peoples of all northern Britain. His victories had 
wholly changed the political relations which had till 
now existed between the northern states of Britain 
and the West-Saxon kings. During ^^Ifred's days, 
as through the earlier days of his son, fear of the 
Danes had driven the Britons of Strathclyde, with 
the Bernicians under the house of Eadwulf, to seek 
the friendship, if not the aid, of the house of Cerdic. 
The same fear had told even more powerfully on the 
kinp-dom of the Scots. Pirate raids had been shat- 
tering the Scot realm for a hundred years, when in 

^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 923. 
^ E. Chron. (Winch.), a. 924. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 207 

.Alfred's days' a Norse earldom was set up in the chap. v. 
Orkneys and became the base for a more systematic The 
attack. From this base the " black strangers " had Alfred!* 
ever since been conquering and colonizing the west- 901T37 
ern Hebrides and winning inch by inch the main- — 
land.' From Caithness and the tract to which they 
have left their name of "Southern-land," or Suther- 
land, they pushed over Ross and Moray, till, under 
its present king, Constantine, the Scot kingdom had 
practically shrunk to little more than the basin of 
the Tay. Pressed between the Northmen of the 
Orkneys and the Danes of the Danelaw, the Scots, 
and in a lesser degree, their western and southern 
neighbors in Strathclyde and Bernicia, looked nat- 
urally with friendship to the power in the south 
which held the Danes at bay. 

But with the triumphs of Eadward and his sister, Submission 
the dread of the Danes was lifted from these north- northern 
ern states ; and no sooner was it removed than it 
was replaced by a dread of the West Saxons them- 
selves. As ^thelfl^d pushed the Danelaw further 
from the Welsh border, we see Welsh princes aban- 
doning the West-Saxon alliance, and turning, though 
unsuccessfully, to the Dane. And at this moment 
the approach of Eadward, the steady closing round of 
his West-Saxon and Mercian hosts, seems to have 
worked as complete a change of policy in the north. 
In the gathering of 924 we catch the first signs of 
that general league of its states which was again and 
again to front the West-Saxon sovereigns, till it was 
finally broken by the statesmanship of Eadmund. 

1 Soon after 883. Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 344, note. 
* Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 341 et seq. 



leame. 



Houso of 
JSlfred. 

901-037 



2oS '''fl'- CONIJUEST OF KNC'.LANl). 

cuAiw. Wliilc luiihwHil was ostahlishini; his h.isi.^ oi i^pora- 
Tho tions alcHii; tho southwosl o( Northumbria, the 

JSllrod, Scot-king C\Mistantiiu\ with tlio princes ot Strath- 
clvdc ami the Knd ot ncrnii-ia, seem to have 
gathcveJ to the aid oi tlie Norlhunihrians, Init it 
this were so. panic must haxe broken (he cheani of 
war, lor we know onl\- ot this i;alherinL:, by tl\c sub- 
mission to which it \cd. l^athvard was ahvadv on 
liis march bv the route which led lhroui;h the hills 
oi the Teak, when his advance was arrested, jM-obably 
at the point whose sig-niticant name ot "Por" or 
"door" marked the pass that opened trenn them on 
to the Northumbrian border, and where .i lumdrctl 
years bctore the north had submitted to licgberht. 
Instead of lighting, the motley company of allies 
sought I'^adwaril's camp among the hills .md owned 
him as *' father and k^rd.'" ' 

' "And him choso tlu to to lather and lord the Scot-king and all 
Scot-folk, and Rciinuld, and Kadnlfs son. and all that dwelt in 
Northnn\bria, whether Knglishtnen or P.\nish or Norihtnen or oth- 
er, and eke the King of the Strathehde Welshmen, and all Stratli- 
elyile Welshmen.""— Kng. <.liron. (^Wineh.^^. a. 0.24. No jv.ssage has 
beei\ n\ore tiereely tonght over than this, since the legists of the 
Knglish court made it the groinulwork of the claims which the 
English crown advanced on the allegiance of Scotland; aiul it has 
of late beet\ elaborately discussed by Mr. Robertson on the one side 
(Scotlattd under her Early King^. ii. 3S4') and Mr. Freeman on the 
other i^Nornt. Conq. i. Appendix G), The entry cannot be contem- 
porary, for Regnald. whom it makes king in Northumbria. had died 
three \xars IkMoiw in g^i ; nor is there, indeed, ground for placing 
the cvMupilation of this section of the Chronicle of Winchester 
earlier than v)75. or the eml of l\adgar's reign, some lifty years after 
the " Commendation "" 0'-<»lc. Introd. pp. xix.-xxii.'i; and as the •• im- 
(xn'ial " claims of the Fnglish crown seenv to date prettN' much from 
the later days of ICadg^ir or the begimting of .Fahelrcd's reign, an 
entry made at that tin\e woidd naturally take its form from them. 
I cannot see any difference between this submission of the league 
in 9J4., and the subsequent submissions of the same confederates 



901-937. 

ylithelilan. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 209 

The triumph over the northern league was hardly '-"^(j v. 
won when, in the opening of 925, I'^adward died at The 
Fearndun in Mereia," and hi.s son /lithelstan jEifred. 
mounted the throne.' After- tradition preserved 
lovingly the memory of ylithelstan's outer aspect, 
of his slight though vigorous frame, and ui his 
golden hair." Nor did it dwell less lovingly on the 
character of his rule. In outer greatness, indeed, in 
his exploits at home as in the position he occupied 
in the European world, no king of Cerdic's line 
could vie with the son of Eadward. Nor was his 
temper less great. The sudden failure of our infor- 
mation leaves his reign in some ways darker than 
those of his predecessors; for the Chronicle of Win- 
chester breaks down into meagre annals with Ead- 
ward's death, and from brilliant historic light we 
pass suddenly into almost utter darkness." But the 

after their later outbreaks against ^thelstan, which are clearly 
mere episodes in the struggle for supremacy in the north. 

' For date, sec Eng. Chron, (Winch.), a. 925 ; for place, Eng. Chron. 
(Wore, D.), a. 924. 

" In the Eng. Chron. of Worcester (or Mcrcia), wc arc carefully 
told that iEthelstan was " chosen king by the Mercians, and hal- 
lowed at Kingston." The entry shows how stubbornly the Mercian 
kingdom clung to its separate existence, and how far it was still 
from regarding itself as fused in a single England. As King of the 
West Saxf^ns, yEthclstan was doubtless chosen and hallowed at 
Winchester. 

^ Will. Malm., Gcst. Reg. (Hardy), i. 213. Sec also the tradition 
of his learning, ibid. p. 209. — (A. S. G.) 

* From 925 to 975 is the most meagre section of the Winchester 
Chronicle ( Earle, Par. Chron., Introd. pp. xviii.-xxii.). The first 
twelve annals of this period only fill as many lines ; and the story 
becomes even more jejune as it proceeds, till in Eadgar's day the 
historic thread is almost wholly lost, though the meagre entries are 
broken by four great pieces of verse. For yEthelstan's reign wc are 
a little helped by a few insertions in the Worcester copy of the 
Chronicle (Earle's D). Our main aid is from William of Malmesbury, 

14 



2IO THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. king's acts speak for themselves. Through a reign 
The of fifteen years we see no sign of weakness. At 
jEifred. home ^thelstan proved himself worthy of the 
90^937. knightly sword with which Alfred had girded him 
in his childhood : he was a great soldier and a firm 
ruler. But his ability found a wider sphere than in 
his own island realm. His temper, indeed, was Eu- 
ropean rather than merely English ; and in his for- 
eign policy he showed a breadth of conception, a 
faculty of combination, a diplomatic adroitness, 
which was new in the history of our kings. From 
y^thelwulf onwards the royal house of Wessex had 
drawn closer to a union with the states of the Con- 
tinent; but ^thelstan carried out this tendency 
with a large and well -devised scheme of policy 
which bound western Europe together against the 
common enemy. 
^^Danef Bcforc him, at the very outset of his reign, lay the 
Scots, atid difficulty of the north. Eadward's plans for its con- 

Welsh. . . 

quest had been checked, first, by the submission of 
its chieftains to his supremacy, and then by his 
death ; and the reduction of this remaining half of 
the Danelaw thus fell to the lot of his son. For 
the moment ^thelstan seemed content with the 
same acknowledgment of his supremacy which had 
satisfied his father, but the tie was drawn closer by 
a matrimonial alliance. In January, 925, the ruler 
of the Danes of York, Sihtric, appeared at yEthel- 
stan's court, which was then at Tamworth, and took 
the king's sister to wife.' The bond, however, soon 

who had before him a life of -^thelstan which is now lost. William's 
enthusiasm for ^thelstan, however,ds partly attributable to the king's 
bounty to Malmesbury. ' Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 925. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 211 

snapped; for in 926 Sihtric died, as it would seem, chat. v. 
by a violent death, which may have been provoked The 
by this submission to the English king; and a re- ^Se&! 
newal of the old confederacy which had met his ^^37 
father warned ^thelstan that the time had come to 
complete his work. His armies marched over the 
border; the northern Danelaw passed into his 
hands without a blow,' and its allies bowed to him 
with as little resistance. In July, ^thelstan was 
met at a place called Eamot by Howel, King of the 
North Welsh, and Owen of Gwent, as well as by the 
Bernician Ealdred from Bamborough and the Scot- 
king Constantine, " and with pledge and with oaths 
they bound fast the peace."' But the Welsh had 
still to make amends for their disaffection. Sum- 
moning the chiefs of the North Welsh before him at 
Hereford, i^thelstan forced them to own his over- 
lordship as Mercian king, to pay a yearly tribute of 
corn and cattle, and to accept the Wye as a bound- 
ary between Welshmen and Englishmen. The 
West Welsh must have shared in the restlessness of 
their race, for from Hereford the king marched to 
Exeter, and, driving the Britons from the half of the 

' Guthferth, Sihtric's son and successor, was driven out, says Sim. 
Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 927. The Canterbury Chronicle (Earle, E) 
places this in 927. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 926. Mr. Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 351) 
thinks that by some after-words, " and they renounced all idolatry, 
and after that submitted to him in peace," the Chronicle "stamps 
its own statement with doubt." The words, however, may be only 
a misplaced bit of the actual convention with the Danes of Deira. 
As to the submission itself, I think it may fairly be questioned 
whether this is not the real transaction which the Winchester 
Chronicler (here of no great authority) has transferred to the last 
year of Eadward the Elder. 



212 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CTHAP. V, town they had hitherto occupied, girded it with a 

The wall of stone/ Then pushing forward to the Land's 

jE?fted End, he forced the Cornwealas to an engagement 

901^7 ^^ ^ ^^^*^ which tradition places at the hamlet of 
— Bolleit by St. Buryan's, where two huge stones are 
said to mark the burial-place of those who fell in 
the final overthrow of their race. The Tamar was 
fixed as a boundary for the West Welsh of Corn- 
wall, as the Wye had been made a boundary for the 
North Welsh of our Wales. From this moment, 
indeed, we may look upon both peoples as integral 
parts of the English kingdom, owning their oneness 
with it by tribute, though, in North Wales at least, 
breaking their allegiance by occasional revolt. 

j^tMstan, That yEthelstan's campaigns in the west did their 

Northiim- work is plain from the fact that in the later troubles 
of his reign we hear no more of West -Welsh or 
North-Welsh risings. His work, too, seemed fairly 
done in the north. As yet all was quiet there, 
y^thelstan carried out his father's policy of a na- 
tional union in the person of the king by taking to 
himself the throne of Northumbria ; already King 
of Wessex and King of Mercia, he became, in 926, 
after Sihtric's death. King of the Northumbrians.' 
The new realm showed no signs of disaffection ; the 
jarls of the Danelaw indeed, Guthrum and Urm, 
Odda and Anlaf, Regnwald and Scule, Thurferth 
and Halfdene, Haward and Gunner, sat peacefully 
in Witenagemots among yEthelstan's ealdormen. In 
the same great assemblies Rodward, the Archbishop 
of York, sat side by side with the Archbishop of 

' Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 214. 
* Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 926. 



901-937. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, 213 

Canterbury.' We have already seen the importance <^hap. v.- 
which the destruction of the neighboring sees, and The 
his lonely position as representing the Engle and ^ift-ed" 
the Christianity of the north, had given to the north- 
ern primate. It was through him, above all, that 
^thelstan could win hold on the newly conquered 
kingdom ; and in 934 the death of Rodward enabled 
the king to secure, as it seemed, this support by the 
appointment of a new archbishop of his own, Wulf- 
stan,' while grants to Beverley and Ripon ' secured 
the loyalty of the northern clergy. But yEthelstan 
was as eager to win over Danes as Englishmen. 
As we have seen, the fusion of the two races had al- 
ready begun. Even in y^lfred's day we find a young 
Dane among the scholars at Athelney, Frisian sail- 
ors manning the royal long-ships, and Norwegians 
like Othere at court, owning the king as their lord. 

^ In 929, perhaps in a Witenagemot at York, we find among the 
signatures of " duces et caeteri optimates " those of Guthrum, Urm, 
Odda, Anlaf, as well as of " Rodeward quoque Archiprsesul cum 
Eboracensis suffraganeis " (Cod. Dip. 347). The Archbishop signs 
another charter of the same year with "Urmus Dux" and "Guthrum- 
mus dux" (Cod. Dip. 348). At Lewton, in 931, Orm, Guthrum, Ha- 
ward. Gunner, Thurferth, Hadd, and Scule sign as "duces" (Cod. 
Dip. 353). In the great Witenagemot of Colchester, in 931, we find 
Guthrum, Thurum, Haward, Regenwold, Hadd, and Scule as " du- 
ces" (Cod. Dip. 1 102), and the Archbishop of York. Archbishop 
Wulfstan again appears, in 932, in an equally large Witenagemot at 
Middleton with Uhtred, Thesberd, Guthrum, Urm, Regnwald, Hatel, 
Scule, Thurferth, and "Imper" (Cod. Dip. 1107), and in the Wite- 
nagemot of Winchester, 934, with " Inhwaer, Halfdene, Oswulf, 
Scule, and Hadd" (Cod. Dip, 364). 

^ The first charter with his signature, if genuine, must belong to 
this year. — Cod. Dip. 350, with note. 

' Cod. Dip. 358 (spurious), and the equally spurious riming char- 
ters to Beverly, Cod. Dip, 359, 360, preserve the memory of these 
grants. 



2 14 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. The earlier days of Eadward saw the Danes of 
The Northumbria take a West-Saxon aetheling for their 

^red!^ king, and the Danes of East AngHa follow him as 

90^937. ^1^^^^' war-leader. The war brought the Northmen 
— into close relations, if not with the English, at any 
rate with their royal house ; and the personal rela- 
tion which the oath of allegiance had established 
between the king and his new subjects was more 
than maintained by ^thelstan. Odo, one of his 
favorite clerks and counsellors, whom he raised 
about 926 to the bishopric of Ramsbury,' and who 
afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, was 
certainly of Danish blood, and said to be the son 
of one of the pagan warriors who landed with Ivar 
and Hubba." In all the northern sagas he is repre- 
sented, in contrast to his successor, as a friend to 
the Northmen; and though tales like that in the 
saga of Egil Skallogrimson, of the service of Egil 
and his brother Thorolf under yElthelstan's banner, 
can hardly be accepted as history, they at any rate 
preserve the belief of the north that yEthelstan 
maintained a force of its warriors at his court, and 
loved to listen to its skalds. 

His Wife- As yet this policy of fusion seemed fairly success- 
ful ; for Northumbria showed no signs 01 resistance, 
and the king's peaceful march on York was followed 
by eight years of as peaceful acquiescence in his 
rule. The submission of the Welsh, too, seemed 

' Stubbs, Registr. Sacr. Anglic, p. 14. 

- " Dicunt quidam quod ex ipsis Danis pater ejus esset, qui cum 
classica cohorte cum Huba et Hinwar veniebant." — Vit. S. Oswaldi 
Anon., Raines Historians of Ch. of York, i. 404. " Hie, ut fertur, 
Ethelstano regi valde carus esset et acceptus." — Eadmer, Life of Os- 
wald, Angl. Sac. ii. 192. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 215 

complete; for their " under-kings," Howel and Jud- chap. v. 
wal, Morcant and Owen, sat in the great Witenage- The 
mots' which mark this period of ^thelstan's reign. Alfred. 
In y^thelstan's Witenagemots, indeed, in the number 9011937. 
and variety of their attendants, England saw some- — 
what of a foreshadowing of national life/' Never 
before had Danish jarls and Welsh princes, the 
primate of the north and the primate of the south, 
nobles and thegns from Northumbria and East 
Anglia, as from Mercia and Wessex, met in a com- 
mon gathering to give rede and counsel to a com- 
mon king. As witan from every quarter of the 
land stood about his throne, men realized how the 
King of Wessex had risen into the King of Eng- 
land. Such assemblies could not fail to gather 
rights about them, though the rights of the witan 
were determined rather by their actual power as 
great lords and prelates than by any constitutional 
theory. But the old Germanic tradition, which as- 
sociated " the wise men " in all royal action, gave a 
constitutional ground to the powers which the Wite- 
nagemot exercised more and more as English so- 
ciety took a more and more aristocratic form ; and 
it thus came to share with the crown in the higher 
justice, in the imposition of taxes, the making of 

'■ In that of Lewton, in 931, we find Howel and Judwal ; in anoth- 
er of 931, Howel, Judwal, Morcant, Eugenius ; in one of 932, Howel, 
Judwal, Morcant, Wurgeat ; in the Winchester Witenagemot of 934, 
Howel, Judwal, Teowdor ; in the Frome Witenagemot of 934, Howel 
alone. — Cod. Dip. 353, 1 103, 1 107, 364, mo. 

^ The Witenagemot at Lewton, in 931, numbered ninety-four per- 
sons : two archbishops, two Welsh under-kings, seventeen bishops, 
fifteen duces, and fifty-nine "ministers.'' — Cod. Dip. 353. That of 
Colchester (March, 931) numbered sixty-nine attendants; that of 
Middleton (August, 932) eighty-six. — Cod. Dip. 1102, 1107. 



2i6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. laws, the conclusion of treaties, the control of war, 

The the disposal of public lands, the appointment of 

Alfred, bishops and great officers of state. There were 

801I937. times when it claimed even to elect or depose a 

— king: 

^order Under i^thelstan, however, its work was simply 
a work of order. The disturbance of society which 
had been brought about by the Danish wars had 
forced this work on the king from the very outset 
of his reign." The laws enacted in a " great synod" 
at Greatley, near Andover, for the central provinces, 
repeated at a Witenagemot at Exeter ' for the prov- 
inces of the west, and again promulgated in like 
meetings of witan at Feversham and Thunresfeld 
for Kent and for Surrey, were in effect a code for 
the regulation of public order,* and above all for the 
defence of property. The defiance of justice by 
nobles and thegns, before which the local courts 
were helpless, stood foremost among the evils of the 
time. It was an evil which only the growing de- 
velopment of the "king's justice " could meet. "If 
any be so rich or of such great kindred," ran the 

' Kemble, Saxons in Eng. vol. ii. cap. vi. 

'•' " That they would all hold the frith, as King ^thelstan and his 
witan had counselled it, first at Greatanlea and again at Exeter and 
afterwards at Feversham, and a fourth time at Thunresfeld before 
the archbishop and all the bishops and his witan, whom the king 
himself named who were thereat." — Dooms of London, Thorpe, 
Anc. Laws, i. 241. " All the witan gave their weds together to the 
. archbishop at Thunresfeld, when -^Elfeah Stybb and Bryhtnoth 

Odda's son came to meet the Witenagemot by the king's command." 
— Ibid. 239. 

^ " At midwinter." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 221. 

* We may note that their scope extends only to Wessex : Mercia 
and the Danelaw had still their separate systems of legislation and 
government. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 217 

Exeter law, " that he cannot be kept back from rob- chap. v. 
bery or the defence of robbers, let him be taken out The 
of that country with wife and child and all his goods ^^fred. 
into that part of this kingdom that the king wills, be 901I937. 
he who he may, whether one of the thegns or vil- — 
leins, on terms that he never return into his own 
land." ' Nor could any save the king deal with the 
abuses of the sokes, or private jurisdictions like the 
later manorial courts, with " the lord who denies 
justice and upholds his evil-doing men," the " lord 
who is privy to his theow's theft," or the "reeve 
who is privy to the thieves who have stolen."" 
Other regulations furthered the social revolution 
which was replacing the freeman by the lord and his 
man. For the lordless man, " of whom no law can 
be got," his kindred were to find a lord in the folk- 
moot, or he was to be held for an outlaw and slain 
like a thief.' On the other hand, a lord " who has 
so many men that he cannot personally have all in 
his own keeping," was bound to set over each de- 
pendent township a reeve, not only to exact his 
lord's dues, but to enforce his justice within its 
bounds." 

The growth of public wealth in the midst of this p^'^^''^ 

• 1 111 • 1 • , 1 -wealth. 

violence was shown by the prommence which the 
king gives to laws affecting property. Theft be- 
comes one of the greatest of crimes ; no thief was 
to be spared who was taken " red-handed," or who 
strove to defend himself or to flee from arrest." 

- Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 218. 

* Ibid. 201. Mbid. 

* " Praeponat sibi singulis villis praepositum unum." — LI. Atheist., 
Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 217. 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 199. 



2i8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARv. Trade dealings were protected by regulations whose 
The severity defeated its own end. No man might "ex- 
Jiifred. change any property without the witness of the 
801U937. reeve or of the mass-priest, or of the land-lord, or of 
the hordere, or of other unlying man." The regula- 
tion that all marketing was to be " within port " or 
market town, nor was any bargaining lawful on Sun- 
days,' had but a brief life, for in the mid-winter 
meeting at Exeter it was explicitly repealed : " Let 
all the dooms made at Greatley be kept, save those 
about marketing within port and selling on Sun- 
days.'" Another enactment shows us that the 
growth of trade to which these regulations point 
was giving a new importance to the question of the 
coinage. In the early ages of the English occupa- 
tion we find only a coarse imitation of the later 
Roman coinage ; and rude and base as this money 
was, it probably sufficed for a land whose exchange 
w^as mainly conducted by barter. The laws against 
mutilation of cattle — laws really directed against the 
damage done to a beast which in a perfect state 
was the general medium of exchange — and the fact 
that these laws are embodied in Ine's code, prove 
that such a mode of payment was still common in 
the opening of the eighth century in Wessex. But 
in Kent, the neighborhood of Gaul and the growth 
of trade would narrow the sphere of such cattle- 
barter ; and the assessment of the " wer " through- 
out yE^thelberht's law in coin shows that specie-pay- 
ment was common there a century before Ine's day. 
It was not, however, till Offa's reign that the grow- 
ing commerce, as well, no doubt, as the growth of 
^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 205, 207, 213. * Ibid. 218. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 219 

internal trade, forced the regulation of the coinage chap. v. 
on the English kings as a political matter ; and it is Th© 
significant that Offa drew his standard of value ^Srta!^ 
from the coinage of the Prankish kings.' But the 00^1^7 
union of the kingdoms had now made the substitu- — 
tion of a national coinage for these local mintages 
a necessity. " Let there be one money over all the 
king's land," ran the new law ; " and let no man 
mint save within port." The list of towns where 
mints were established gives us a rough indication 
of the comparative greatness of the boroughs in 
southern Britain. London stood at their head with 
eight moneyers, Canterbury followed with seven, 
Winchester with six, Rochester had three coiners, 
Lewes, Southampton, Wareham, Exeter, and Shaftes- 
bury two, Hastings, Chichester, and "other burhs" 
but one.' 

The real difficulty, however, lay not in making, Frith- 
but in enforcing the law; for strong as the crown 
might be, its strength lay in the king's personal ac- 
tion, and it was far from possessing any adequate 
police or judicial machinery for carrying its will 
into effect. To supply such a machinery was the 
aim of the frith-gilds. Society and justice, as we 
have seen, had till now rested on the basis of the 
family, on the kinsfolk bound together in ties of 
mutual responsibility to each other and to the law. 
As society became more complex and less station- 
ary, it necessarily outgrew these ties of blood, and in 
England this dissolution of the family bond seems 
to have taken place at the very time when Danish 

* See Robertson, Histor. Essays, p. 63. 
"^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 207, 209. 



220 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. incursions and the growth of a feudal temper among 
Tho the nobles rendered an isolated existence most peril- 
mtred. ^us for the freeman. His only resource was to 
90^937. seek protection among his fellow-freemen, and to re- 
place the older brotherhood of the kinsfolk by a 
voluntary association of his neighbors for the same 
purposes of order and self-defence. The tendency 
to unite in such " frith-gilds," or peace-clubs, became 
general throughout Europe during the ninth and 
tenth centuries, but on the Continent it was roughly 
met and repressed. The successors of Charles the 
Great enacted penalties of scourging, nose-slitting, 
and banishment against voluntary unions, and even 
a league of the poor peasants of Gaul against the 
inroads of the Northmen was suppressed by the 
swords of the Prankish nobles. In England the 
attitude of the kings was utterly different. The 
system known at a later time as "frank-pledge," or 
free engagement of neighbor for neighbor, was ac- 
cepted after the Danish wars as the base of social 
order. yElfred recognized the common responsi- 
bility of the members of the " frith-gild " side by side 
with that of the kinsfolk, and ^thelstan accepted 
" frith-gilds " as a constituent element of borough 
life in the dooms of London.' In the frith-gild an 
oath of mutual fidelity among its members was sub- 
stituted for the tie of blood, while the gild-feast, held 
once a month in the common hall, replaced the 
gathering of the kinsfolk round their family hearth. 
But within this new family the aim of the gild was 
to establish a mutual responsibility as close as that 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, vol. i., Ine, pp. 113, 117; Alfred, pp. 79, 81 ; 
.^thelstan, pp. 229, 237. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 221 

of the aid. "Let all share the same lot," ran its chap. v. 
law; "if any misdo, let all bear it." A member The 
could look for aid from his gild-brothers in atoning mtred. 
for any guilt incurred by mishap ; he could call on 90^1^37 
them for assistance in case of violence or wrong ; if — ■ 
falsely accused they appeared in court as his com- 
purgators ; if poor they supported, and when dead 
they buried him. On the other hand, he was re- 
sponsible to them, as they were to the State, for 
order and obedience to the laws. A wrong of 
brother against brother was a wrong against the 
general body of the gild, and was punished by fine, 
or in the last resort by expulsion, which left the 
offender a " lawless " man and an outcast. The one 
difference between these gilds in country and town 
was that in the latter case, from their close local 
neighborhood, they tended inevitably to coalesce. 
Imperfect as their union might be, when once it was 
effected the town passed from a mere collection of 
brotherhoods into an organized community, whose 
character was inevitably determined by the circum- 
stances of its origin. 

While the frith-gild was thus supplying one, at ThesMre. 
least, of the elements of a new municipal life within 
English boroughs, a new organization of the country 
at large was going on in the institution of the shire. 
In the earlier use of the word, "shire" had simply 
answered to " division." The town of York was 
parted into seven such shires. There were six 
" small shires " in Cornwall. The old king^dom of 
Deira has left indications of its divisions in our 
Richmondshire, Kirbyshire, Riponshire, Hallam- 
shire, Islandshire and Norhamshire ; just as their 



22 2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.v. lathes and rapes represent, perhaps, the old shires 
The of the kingdoms of Kent and of Surrey. The name 

^bQ&. was used even for ecclesiastical divisions of terri- 

901^7 tory — a diocese is a " bishop's shire," ' a parish is a 
— " kirk shire." But in its later form of a territorial 
division for purely administrative purposes, the shire 
was, in fact, the creation of an artificial " folk." Its 
judicial and administrative forms were all those of 
the " folk " transferred within artificial boundaries ; 
and the representative life of folk-moot and hun- 
dred-moot was thus preserved in the shire, with all 
its incalculable consequences in later Enghsh his- 
tory. 

neWesf- -pj^g shire, so far as we can see historically, is 

Siixoii , _ 

shires, specially a West-Saxon institution. The first traces 
of it, indeed, may probably be found in the earliest 
ages of West-Saxon history. The original Wessex 
was, as we have seen, the region of the Gwent, and 
the earhest portion of West-Saxon conquest within 
that area was the region we call Hampshire. For 
this region we possess no earlier name, and in the 
name itself we find traces of a very early date, for 
Hampshire is but an abridged Hamtonshire, the 
district that found its centre in the tun that is now 
represented by our Southampton. Had the forma- 
tion of this district taken place after the revival of 
Winchester, and the settlement of the West-Saxon 
kings and bishops there in the time of Cenwalch,' 
the district would naturally have taken such a 

* That of Ealdhelm is styled " Selwoodshire." ^thelweard, a. 
709. On the other hand, we may note that Bseda knows only of 
"dioceses" in Wessex, as he knows only "regiones" in Mercia. 

= Cenwalch reigned from 643 to 672.— (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 223 

name as Winchestershire, like our Leicestershire chap. v. 
or Gloucestershire ; but its name of Hamtonshire The 
points necessarily to an earlier date than this, and jEiSedL 
one which cannot be later than the first half of the 901I937. 
seventh century. The name, however, has more to — 
tell us. A shire is necessarily a district " shorn " off 
from some neighbor district ; and the artificial char- 
acter o'f such a " shearing " between Hampshire and 
Wiltshire is shown in the absence of any distinctly 
marked local divisions in the bounds between the 
two shires, while a close connection between the two 
districts is shown in the similarity of their naming. 
Not only does Hampshire draw its name from the 
" tun " of the first Gewissas at Hamton, but the " t " 
in our Wiltshire shows that the word is only a con- 
tracted form of Wiltonshire, or the shire that found 
its " tun " in our Wilton, the settlement made by the 
Gewissas in the valley of the little Wil or Wiley. 
It is possible that each tun may have been a gather- 
ing-place of its shire-folk for moots and sacrifices ; 
but, however this may have been, we cannot fail to 
see in the relations of the two an indication not only 
of the very early existence of the shire institution 
among the West Saxons, but of the formation of the 
shire in its earliest shape round a central " tun." 

The West -Saxon orimn of the "shire "is con- ^•^^5'"'''" 

<^ of the 

firmed by the fact that its name first occurs in the ^^^i^^- 
laws of the West-Saxon Ine.' The shire already 
has its shireman, or shire-reeve, whose primary busi- 
ness must have been the collection of the royal farms 
and dues from each district, but who, in assessing 
these and deciding on claims of exemption and the 
* Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 107. 



224 "^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAK V. lii^e^ must, from the first, have tended to become the 
The judicial officer we find him under Alfred, and to 
jEifred. take his place in the shire-moot in that capacity be- 
901I937. side bishop and ealdorman. It is possible, however, 
that in Ine's day this shire-organization did not ex- 
tend beyond the area of the Gwent, with, perhaps, 
its dependency of the present Berkshire. Wessex, 
indeed, was already spreading beyond its older 
bounds; besides Sussex or Surrey or the districts 
across the Thames, the West Saxons to the east of 
Selwood saw a new Wessex to the west of that for- 
est, in the regions of the Dorssetan and of the Som- 
ersaetan. Their conquests, however, in this quarter, 
were far from being completed in the reign of Ine ; 
the conquest, in fact, of the southwest, dragged on 
until the reign of Ecgberht, and it is likely enough 
that, amid the troubles of the kingdom during this 
period, the organization of the loosely compacted 
folks of "saetan," or settlers, that spread over its va- 
rious regions, did not receive any definite form till 
that time. From Ecgberht's day, however, we have 
grounds for believing that the whole of the West- 
Saxon kingdom was definitely ordered in separate 
"pagi," each with an ealdorman at its head, and 
these "pagi" can hardly have been other than shires.' 
In the names of the bulk of them, however, we note 
a striking difference from the names of the two ear- 

^ In the course of the Danish descents, at this time, the Chronicle 
mentions ealdormen of Hamtonshire, of the Wilssetan, of Surrey, and 
of Berkshire to the east of Selwood ; of Dorset, Somerset, and Dev- 
on to the west of it. Asser mentions " Wilton-scire " in 878. He 
speaks of Chippenham " quae est sita in sinistrali parte Wiltun-scire " 
— (ed. Wise), p. 30. In his translation of Orosius, Alfred speaks of 
Halgoland as a " scyr." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 225 

Her shires. The district no longer draws its name chap. v. 
from the central " tun." In the case of Somerset, The 
indeed, such a tun seems to have existed at Somer- j;ifred. 
ton, but it does not give its name to the shire. The 901I937. 
Somerscetan, like the Dorsaetan, had, perhaps, never 
arrived at even the rude unity which, in the Wilsae- 
tan, is seen raising their central township to an im- 
portance that enabled it to supersede their name, 
and to give its own name to the district ; while far- 
ther west the settlement was so sparse that even the 
settlers failed to print their name exclusively on the 
land, and it retained its old Welsh title of Devon, or 
Dyvnaint, side by side with Defnsaetan. 

In the eastern dominion of the West-Saxon kings Tkeskire 
the new institution adapted itself equally to the older 
kingdoms. Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex, became 
shires equally with the " saetan " of the west, though 
the retention of their older names showed the 
strength of their national tradition.' That the 
shire had spread over them by ^thelstan's time, 
we may gather from the tenor of his laws, which 
speak of the shire as the settled political and judicial 
division throughout Wessex at large.'' It is more 
doubtful when it spread over Mid - Britain. Into 

' Kent, however, is "Kent-shire" in the record of its folk-moot, 
under ^thelstan. — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 216. 

^ ^thelstan's laws, as I have before pointed out, only concern 
Wessex ; but they concern all Wessex, as their reception in Kentish 
and Surrey Witenagemots proves. The " shire "' is always referred 
to as an old and settled thing. At Thunresfeld, probably in Surrey, 
the witan pledged themselves " that each reeve should take the wed 
in his own shire." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 241, The London gild- 
brothers trace a track "from one shire to another." — Ibid. 237. 
" Let forfang everywhere, be it in one shire, be it in more, be fifteen 
pence." — Ibid. 225. 

15 



901-937. 



2 26 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. English Mercia it can hardly have been introduced 
The before the annexation of that district by Eadward in 

MfteA. 9191' and as the few remaining years of that king 
are spent in warfare, it probably dates from the days 
of y^thelstan. The Mercian kingdom, as its bish- 
ops' sees show, had been arranged in five distinct 
regions — the land of the Lindiswaras, that of the 
Hwiccas, the original Mercia with its dependencies 
and its royal city at Tamworth, the land of the Mid- 
dle Eno-le about Leicester, and the land of the South 
Engle, with its see at Dorchester. None of these 
bore the name of shires ; and in the earliest shire- 
organization their existence is only partially recog- 
nized. The land of the Lindiswaras, indeed, became 
Lincolnshire, that of the Middle Engle may be equiv- 
alent to Leicestershire ; but the other divisions are 
broken into smaller districts. Thus, in the new or- 
dering of English Mercia, the land of the Hwiccas 
was broken into the shires of Gloucester and Worces- 
ter, while that of the Hecanas became Hereford- 
shire ; the clearings of the Hwiccas, in the south of 
Arden, were formed into a shire about ^thelflccd's 
new fortress of Warwick, as the dependent districts 
of the original Mercia along the Dee were made a 
shire for the fortress of Chester, and the lands of 
the old South Mercians at the head-waters of the 
Trent a shire for the fortress of Stafford. All these 
districts drew their names, like the earlier West- 
Saxon shires, from their central " town," save Shrop- 

^ I cannot agree with the suggestion that Alfred may have formed 
the shires of EngHsh Mercia. In that case the bounds of the Mer- 
cian shires would correspond with the then bounds of the Danelaw. 
This they do not do ; which makes a date after the conquest of the 
Danelaw pretty certain. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 22 7 

shire, among whose "scrob," or bush, no local centre char v. 
may as yet have grown into life. The 

This connection of the shire with its town centre Alfred! 
would necessarily be strengthened when yEthelstan, 90^1^37. 
or his successors, extended the shire system over ^, — :. 

•' The slure 

Guthrum's kingdom, or the Five Boroughs ; for, as in the 
we have seen, the Danes, with their jarls and holds, 
had, for the most part, clustered in the towns, and 
ruled from thence the districts about them. The 
historic continuity of these districts, indeed", re- 
mained for the most part unbroken. The land of 
the Lindiswaras became Lincolnshire ; Nottingham- 
shire may represent a people of the North Engle, 
as Derbyshire the northern, and Staffordshire the 
southern divisions of the original Mercians ; Leices- 
tershire included the land of the old Middle Engle, 
as Northamptonshire, it may be, that of the South 
Engle; while North-Gyrwa and South-Gyrwa land 
reappeared as Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. 
But here, as in the rest of Mid-Britain, the shire- 
names are wholly different in character from those 
to the south of the Thames. The two " folks " of 
East Anglia alone recall the folk-districts and an- 
cient kingdoms of southern Britain ; Gainas and 
Hwiccas, Hecanas and Magesaetas, Middle Engle 
and South Engle, the very name of Mercia itself, 
alike disappeared from local nomenclature. What, 
however, distinguishes this district from the rest of 
Mid-Britain is that here we find a trace of purely 
artificial divisions. When Eadward, in 91 2, annexed 
London and Oxford, each town already had " lands 
which owed obedience thereto," ' lands which could 

' Eng. Chron. a. 912. 



reeve. 



228 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAKv. hardly have been other in extent than the present 
The Middlesex and Oxfordshire, though the phrase itself 

Alfred, is fair evidence that they had not, as yet, been brought 

90^937 within the shire system. Middlesex, as we have seen, 
— owed its being to the severance of London from the 
rest of Essex ; and in the " lands " about Oxford we 
may possibly see the district won at a time when it 
served as a frontier town against Guthrum's realm. 
Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire 
are other instances of purely military creation, dis- 
tricts assigned to the fortresses which Eadward 
raised at these points.' 

The shire- jj^ Qj^g important point the organization of the 
West-Saxon shires does not seem to have been fully 
carried out in those of the rest of Britain. In Wes- 
sex each shire had its ealdorman, the representative, 
no doubt, of its old local independence, and the head 

' " The arrangement of the whole kingdom in shires is, of course, 
a work which could not be completed until it was permanently uni- 
ted under Eadgar ; and the existing subdivisions of southern Eng- 
land are all traceable back to his day at the latest." — Stubbs, Const. 
Hist. i. 129. In East Anglia the shire-system may have been of 
late introduction. Indeed, it can hardly have been definitely settled 
before the Norman Conquest, as its divisions seem to have been 
often regarded as a single shire up to that time, and the retention 
of the tribal nomenclature in Norfolk and Suffolk, instead of names 
drawn from its town centres, implies that the "shire" had won a 
weaker hold than elsewhere. The northern shires are of yet later 
date; we only hear of "Yorkshire" on the verge of the Conquest. 
" Durham is the county palatine of the Conqueror's minister, formed 
out of the patrimony of St. Cuthbert. Lancashire was formed in 
the twelfth century by joining the Mercian lands between Ribble 
and Mersey with the northern hundreds, which, in Doomsday, were 
reckoned to the West Riding of Yorkshire. Cumberland is the 
English share of the old Cumbrian or Strathclyde kingdom ; 
Northumberland and Westmoreland are the remnants of Northum- 
bria and the Cumbrian frontier." — Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 129. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 229 

of its armed force. In Midland Britain, where eald- chap. v. 
ormen had been accustomed to rule over wider re- The 
gions than those of the shires, it was, perhaps, im- Alfred, 
possible to identify ealdormanries with each shire, 90^1^37 
and we find groups of shires falling under the rule — 
of the same great officer.' But the shireman, or the 
shire-reeve, was present in all ; and his presence 
gives us the clue to the real grounds of the shire 
system.^ Though its main issues were political, and 
though its yet more immediate issues probably in- 
volved the first great national reconstruction of our 
judicial system, there can be little doubt that its orig- 
inal aim was strictly financial.' The king's reeve, 
like the reeve of any one else, was simply the agent 
through whom the king received whatever was ow- 
ing to him, whether the customs of a port, or the 
dues of his thegns, or the customary " firm " and 
services of a town which lay in his immediate lord- 
ship. When the shire was once constituted, such 
an agent was necessary to receive that portion of 
the proceeds of the shire-court ' which fell to the 
crown, and, by a natural extension of this duty, the 
various sums payable within the limits of the shire 
as customary dues, heriots, and the like. Each shire 
was bound to provide, not only a stated number of 
men for the fyrd, but a stated sum by way of com- 
position for the revenue which the king would have 
drawn from what had been the folk-land within its 
bounds, and at a later time a stated number of ships, 
or their equivalent in " ship-money." The gather- 

* Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 131. 

* For shire-reeve, see Kemble, Sax. in Eng. ii. 157 et seq. 
^ See Cod. Dip. 1323. 



230 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. ing of these sums, as well as of the forfeitures and 
The fines incurred for absence from moot and host, was 
Alfred, the work of the shire-reeve/ His business, however, 
801I937. was necessarily judicial as well as financial, for half 
— the work of a shire-court came to consist in the as- 
certainment, the assessment, and the recovery of 
such royal dues, as well as fines and forfeitures owed 
to the crown ; and from presiding over the trial of this 
class of cases, the shire-reeve could not fail to pass, 
like the later Barons of the Exchequer, into the posi- 
tion of a standing judge of the court. The presence 
of the ealdorman and the bishop, who legally sat 
with him in the shire-moot, and whose presence re- 
called the folk-moot from which it sprang, would 
necessarily be rare and irregular, while the reeve was 
bound to attend f and the result of this is seen in 
the way in which the shire-moot soon became known 
simply as the sheriff's court. It is difficult to fix 
the position of the early shire-reeve, or to trace the 
steps by which he rose to be a great executive offi- 
cer, while he absorbed the judicial authority of bish- 
op and earl.' But, from the very nature of the case, 
it is clear that the process must have been contin- 

^ "I command all my reeves," says Cnut, "that they justly pro- 
vide for me as my own and maintain me therewith; and that no 
man need give them anything as farm -aid unless he choose." — 
Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 413. 

^ It was, in fact, the shire-reeve and not the ealdorman who was 
the constituting officer^ of the shire-moot. — Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 

134. 

^ ^thelstan's laws imply in the reeves a duty of putting royal en- 
actments in force, as in the provisions of the synod of Greatanlea ; 
and by ^thelred's day this executive character was clearly recog- 
nized. " If there be any man who is untrue to all the people, let the 
king's reeve go and bring him under surety," etc. — Thorpe, Anc. 
Laws, i. 283. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 23 1 

ually going on, and that with the very close relation chap^v. 
of finance to government in those early times, the The 
presence of the royal reeve in a shire, and his regu- Alfred, 
lar presidency of its court, must, from the first, have 901I937. 
brought home to a Mercian or an East Anglian the 
sense of a national king in a more personal and con- 
tinuous way than any other agency. 

As the years passed in this work of peaceful ^^- ^t^->f^l'ig 
ganization, and the realm remained unstirred about 
him, we can hardly wonder that the king looked on 
himself more and more as " Lord of Britain." At 
his accession he had adopted the style of his prede- 
cessor as "King of the Angul-Saxons ;" ' but once 
master of Northumbria the consciousness of a larger 
rule blends oddly with the effort to find a common 
name for the lands beneath his sway. In 927 he 
calls himself " Monarch of all Britain ;" ' two years 
later, in 929, he is administering " the kingdom of all 
Albion ;" ' then, after two more years of fluctuation 
between these titles, we find him, in 933, viewing him- 
self in a more literal way as " King of the English- 
folk and of all the nations dwelling with them on 
every side."* But in the next year this sobriety of 
tone is set aside for styles of a more high-flown 
sort, and y^thelstan announces himself not only as 
" King of the Angul-Saxons and of all Britain," but 
as " Angul-Saxon King and Brytenwealda of all 
these islands," ' and by a yet higher reach of language 

' A grant of 926 says " Angul-Saxonum rex." — Cod. Dip. 1099. 
2 Cod. Dip. 1 100. ^ Ibid. 347. 

* " Angligenarum omniumque gentium undique secus habitantium 
rex." — Cod. Dip. 1 109. In one shape or other this form of the royal 
style seems to have clung to the English chancery through several 
reigns. Its real meaning we shall see in Eadred's day. 

* His subscription to the Latin charter, " Angul-Saxonum necnon 



232 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. as " Basileus of the English and at the same time 
The Emperor of the kings and nations dwelHng within 

Alfred, the bounds of Britain." ' 

90^937. What the worth of such claims really was we see 
—7, from the fact that at the m^oment he used them the 

Stan's di- pompous faboc of his " Empire was crumbling at 
°^""^y' ^thelstan's feet. Northumbria had risen,' and with 
its rising had begun a struggle which was to tax the 
energies of the West-Saxon kings for thirty years to 
come, and to end in the virtual disintegration of 
the English state. In some measure the strife was a" 
result of yElthelstan's own diplomacy. He saw that 
his holding of the English Danelaw was not merely 
dependent on himself and the English Danes. The 
settlement of the Northmen across Watling Street 
was flanked by like settlements in Ireland and in 
Gaul ; and no lasting peace could be secured with 
northern Britain which did not provide against the 
revival of the struggle by aid from either quarter. 
The Danes of Deira were closely linked with those 
of Dublin and Waterford; their kings were drawn, 
in fact, from the same stock, and were often only 
driven from the one realm to be owned as rulers in 

et totius Britanniae rex," is rendered in the English copy, " Ongol- 
Saxna cyning and brytenwealda ealles thyses iglandses." — Cod. Dip. 
mo. The word "brytenwealda" occurs here for the first time; I 
find no other instance of it in this reign. It is probably borrowed 
from the entry in the Chronicle which we have before noticed 
(Making of England, p. 306 et seq.); and, in spite of the ingenious 
arguments built on it, seems to me merely an instance of the litera- 
ry archaism and affectation of the time. 

^ Cod. Dip. 349. 

' The imperial style is used in a grant to the Church of Worces- 
ter, by which ^thelstan hopes to win the favor of the saints in his 
war with " Anolafa rege Norrannorum, qui me vita et regno privare 
disponit." — Cod. Dip. 349. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 333 

the other.' Thus, Sihtric had been king of Dublin, chap. v. 
and when driven out thence, in 920, became king at me 
York. His son, Olaf, and his brother, Guthferth, ^^frei! 
had sailed for Dublin on y^thelstan's annexation of qq^^^j 
Deira. From the actual incidents of the later strug- — 
gle, the danger seems, in fact, mainly to have come 
from this quarter ; but though Eadward's work in 
the Ribble country may have been directed to pro- 
viding against descents from Ireland, we know noth- 
ing of the policy which was pursued by the English 
kings in this quarter, and it is clear that the danger 
from the Northmen in Ireland occupied ^Ethelstan's 
mind far less than the danger from the Northmen in 
Gaul. 

In Gaul, the work of the pirates had long been J^^yl/'^ 

scttlcfficiit 

shrinking within narrower bounds. They had with- in Gaui. 
drawn from the Garonne. They were now little 
heard of in the Loire. But the movement of defeat 
was also a movement of concentration ; and their 
attacks fell more heavily than before on the valley 
of the Seine. Ever since the peace of Wedmore, 
the Seine valley had been the field of the Northman 
Hrolf, or, as later story called him, Rollo, a friend of 
Guthrum of East Anglia, and who drew, no doubt, 
much of his strength from the English Danelaw. 
His work had already produced weighty results on 
the aspect of French politics ; for it is to Hrolfs 
forays along the Seine that France owes her capi- 
tal and the lipe of her kings. Paris rose into great- 
ness as the guard of the Seine valley against his at- 
tacks, and with it rose the line of Robert the Strong, 
a warrior to whom the land round Paris as far as 
- Skene, Celtic Scot. i. 351. 



2 34 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. the sea had been granted as a border-land against 
The the Northmen. The defence of Paris by Robert's 
JEifred. son, Odo, in 885, raised his house into rivalry even 
901^937. "^^^^ ^^^ descendants of Charles the Great ; and, in 
— the confusion which followed on the death of the 
successor of Lewis and Carloman, Odo became King 
of the western Franks. But his throne was dis- 
puted by a Karolingian claimant, Charles the Sim- 
ple ; and a strife for the crown, which opened be- 
tween the king at Paris and this rival king at Laon, 
hindered the first from doing his work against the 
pirates of the Seine. Beaten off again and again, 
Hrolf, with Northern stubbornness, still made his 
way back to Rouen, and in 912 his obstinacy found 
its reward, for in the treaty of Clair-on-Epte, Charles 
the Simple granted to the Northmen the coast at the 
mouth of the Seine, from the sea to the Epte. 
Its results. No cvcnt of the time can compare in importance 
with the settlement of Hrolf and his comrades in 
their new " Northman's land." In France its effects 
were felt at once. What mainly brought about the 
treaty was, no doubt, the rivalry between the Karo- 
lingian house and the house of Robert the Strong. 
Charles, in fact, sought to weaken the duchy of Paris 
by carving Hrolf 's country out of it, and by cutting 
off his rivals from the sea. But the settlement not 
only weakened his rivals, it strengthened Charles 
himself. The dread that the Parisian dukes would 
strive to win back again the best part of their duchy, 
bound the Normans to the cause of the Karolingian 
kings ; and that the house of Charles the Great still 
kept a hold on western Frankland for more than 
seventy years was due mainly to the help it drew 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 235 

from the Normans of the Seine. But all thouo^ht chap.v. 
of the effects which Hrolf's settlement produced on The 
the fortunes of France is lost for Englishmen in the jEifred. 
thought of its effect on the fortunes of England. 901I937. 
From the hour when the Northmen settled at the 
mouth of the Seine, the story of the country which 
then became Normandy interweaves itself with the 
story of the English people. As we pass nowadays 
through the Northman's land it is English history 
which is round about us. The names of hamlet at 
ter hamlet have memories for English ears ; a frag- 
ment of castle wall marks the home of the Bruce ; a 
tiny village preserves the name of the Percy ; while 
English religion and English literature look back 
with a filial reverence to the valley buried deep in 
its forest of ash-woods, through which wanders the 
rivulet of " Bec-Herlouin." In the huge cathedrals 
that lift themselves over the red-tiled roofs of Nor- 
man market towns we recognize the models of those 
mightier fabrics which displaced the lowly churches 
of early England. On the windy heights that look 
over orchard and meadow-land rise the square, gray 
keeps which Normandy gave to the cliffs of Rich- 
mond and the banks of the Thames. One thought is 
with us as we pass from Avranches to the Bresle, and 
this thought, the thought of England's conquest by 
the Norman, becomes a living thing as we stand with- 
in the minster which the Conqueror raised at Caen. 
But lono: before WiUiam's day the fortunes of the ^^f 

1 .-, .j^ growth of 

one people had told on those of the other. From Nommn- 
the first hour of the Norman settlement in the val- -''" 
ley of the Seine, the history of Normandy linked 
itself closely with that of England, for the rise of a 



236 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^v. Danelaw across the Channel gave a new force to the 
The Danelaw in Britain.' Whatever hopes of preserving 
Alfred, peaceful relations with the Northmen over Watling 
901I937. Street may have been cherished by the house of 
Alfred passed away with the settlement of their 
brethren in this new Northman's land.' As help 
from the Danelaw had created Normandy, so help 
from Normandy was likely to give a new strength 
to the Danelaw ; and the part which the Irish Ost- 
men had played till now in succoring and re-arous- 
ing the English pirates would probably from this 
time be played by the followers of Hrolf. The dan- 
ger grew with the rapid growth of the new settle- 
ment. Hrolf was a statesman as well as a warrior ; 
and throughout the reign of Eadward he was building 
up a state by policy as well as by arms. It was with 
a statesman's instinct that he clung to the king who 
had given him the Northman's land. It was Hrolf 's 
sword that supported Charles the Simple against his 
enemies — against Odo's son, Duke Robert of Paris, 
and against Robert's son, Hugh the Great. Amidst 
all the king's misfortunes the Norman leader stood 
firm to the Karolingian cause ; it was as a loyal sub- 
ject that he carried his raids over the Parisian duchy 

^ According to all the Norse sources, Gonguhrolf, or Hrolf, was of 
Norse blood, though in Norman and French accounts Dudo and his 
successors, who called him Rollo, make him a Danish prince. But, 
though the accounts that make Hrolf a Norwegian are probably 
right, Steenstrup holds, and Maurer on this point agrees with him, 
that the overwhelming majority of the host that followed him into 
Normandy were of Danish descent. See K. Maurer's review of 
Steenstrup in the Jenaer Literatur-zeitung, 4th series, No. 2, Jan. 13, 
i877,p. 25.— (A. S. G.) 

^ For Hrolf's help to Guthrum against ^Elfred, see Lappenberg, 
ii. 71, 72. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



•^zi 



and penetrated even to Burgundy, till his energy and chap. v. 
fidelity were rewarded by the addition of the Bessin, The 
the district about Bayeux, to the Northman's land. Sx^l. 
In extent, therefore, as in warlike fame, the power Q01I937 
of the Normans had almost doubled at the openine , — 

^ ^ William 

of y^thelstan's reign ; and while the stern hand of Long- 
their leader had fashioned his pirates into a people, 
whose numbers, no doubt, grew with an influx of 
Northmen from the English Danelaw as it passed 
under West-Saxon sway, his political ability was shown 
in the ease with which the settlement was completed 
and the peace that he made throughout the land. 
Nor were the power and ability of his son, William 
Longsword, less than those of Hrolf himself. Will- 
iam's attitude in the strife between kingr and duke 
was that of his father ; while within he carried on 
with even greater vigor the conversion and civiliza- 
tion of his people. But of this civilization of the 
Normans, this instinctive drawing closer to the Christ- 
endom about them, which was to be the key-note of 
their history, the France and the England of the 
day knew nothing. They saw simply a settlement 
in the heart of Western Christendom of men who 
had, for a hundred years past, been slaughtering and 
ravaging over Christian lands. The French spoke 
of them for years to come as "pirates," and called 
their chieftain " the Pirates' Duke." England nat- 
urally looked on them as a political danger of the 
gravest sort. The growing extension of their terri- 
tory along the coast fronted her southern shore with 
a Danelaw more powerful than the Danelaw she had 
struck down ; a Danelaw which threatened the hold 
of England on the Channel, and cut off its commu- 



238 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR V. nications with the rest of Christendom. Powerful, 
The too, as Hrolf's duchy was in itself, it was yet more 

House of f • 1 1 1 . . 1 <• 

iEifred. lormidable as givmg a new centre to the energy 01 
901^37. ^^"^^ Northmen. Beneath all the wild talk of the ear- 
liest Norman chroniclers, we see that Normandy be- 
came from the first the centre of the pirates' life. If 
the boast that English and Irish obeyed the com- 
mands of William Longsw^ord, or the dukes that fol- 
lowed him, may be safely set aside, it points to a 
real influence which the dukes wielded over the body 
of the Danes in England as in Ireland. It was this 
unity of life and action among the Northmen which 
made Normandy so formidable a foe. Every pirate 
settlement was in a state of constant ebb and flow. 
The Northman who fought to-day on the Liffey 
might settle to-morrow on the Trent, while a year 
after he miorht be ravao^insf alono; the Seine or the 
Rhine. That Hrolf's men were tilling their lands 
in the Bessin or the Pays de Caux gave no surety 
that when harvest was gathered in their boats might 
. not be swarming in the H umber or the Colne. And 
with help such as this the work of the house of /E\- 
fred might be undone in an hour; for, conquered as 
it was, the Danelaw waited only for the call of Nor- 
man or Ostman to rise against its conquerors. 
£/igitsk From the moment of their settlement, therefore, 

alliances. 

at the mouth of the Seine, the eyes of the English 
kings had been fixed anxiously on the Normans ; 
and the result of their anxiety had already been seen 
in the birth of a foreign policy. It was dread of the 
Normans which first drew England into connection 
with lands beyond the sea. Northward, eastward, 
and southward the Norman pressure was felt by the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 239 

states which girt In the new duchy, by Flanders and chak v. 
Vermandois, as by the great French dukedom and The 
the wilder Bretons. All had in turn felt the Norman ^rel 
sword ; all dreaded, even more than England itself, 901I937. 
attack from Normandy ; and all sought to strength- 
en themselves against it by bonds of kinship and di- 
plomacy. While facing the Danes at home, the 
English kings had sought to guard themselves 
against attack from abroad by joining in this move- 
ment of union. The marriage of yE If red's daugh- 
ter, yE^lfthryth, with Count Baldwin, of Flanders, was 
the first Instance of a system of marriage alliances 
which the English kings directed from this moment 
against the common foe ; and the same purpose may 
be seen In the marriage of Eadward's daughter, 
Eadgif u, w^ith the Franklsh king, Charles the Simple.' 

yEthelstan not only adopted his father's policy, ^Z^'^^-, 

■' ^ •' Stan s early 

but carried it out on a far wider scale. He had poUcy. 
hardly mounted the throne when he wedded one of 
his sisters, Eadgyth, to Otto, the son of the German 
king Henry," and two years later a fresh political 
marriage linked him to a power nearer home. The 
second marriage followed on a change which passed 
at this moment over French politics. Whatever 
hopes of aid against the Normans yEthelstan may 
have drawn from his sister's marriage with Charles 
were foiled by the claim to the Frankish crown which 
was now made by Rudolf of Burgundy, a brother- 
in-law of Duke Hugh of Paris ; for this fresh attack 
of the Parisian house necessarily threw Charles back 

' Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 197. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 924. " Oflfae Eald Seaxna cynges suna." 
But see, for date, Lappenberg, Hist. Angl, Sax. ii. 134. 



240 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. on his old policy of seeking aid from the pirates at 
The Rouen. The English king, therefore, turned at once 

Alfred, to the house which this new phase of politics marked 

90^937. ^^^ ^^ ^^^ pirates' foe ; and in 926 a marriage was 
— arranged, through the intervention of the Count of 
Boulogne, the son of Baldwin of Flanders and the 
English yElfthryth, between ^thelstan's sister Ead- 
hild and Hugh the Great' The splendid embassy 
with which the Duke of Paris sought Eadhild's hand 
shows the political importance of the match ; and its 
weight may have told on the renewal of the strug- 
gle, between Rudolf and Charles, which followed it. 
But it told more directly on the strength of England 
by absorbing the forces of William Longsword in 
the years during which yEthelstan was annexing the 
Danelaw over the Humber, and turning into a prac- 
tical sovereignty his supremacy over the Welsh. 

^thehtan Abroad, therefore, ^thelstan's schemes seemed 

aiid Will- 

iam Lo>ig-as succcssful as at home. His French confederates 
not only held their own against the Karolingian king, 
but gave full occupation to the Norman duke. In 
929, indeed, the death of Charles the Simple left Will- 
iam Lonesword alone in the face of his foes. Ru- 
dolf was now the unquestioned master of France ; 
and in the following year his victory over the North- 
men of the Loire was a signal for a combined attack 
on the Normans of the Seine. While Hugh the 
Great pressed them from the south, the Bretons, over 
whom Hrolf and his son had asserted vague claims 
of supremacy, and from whom they had wrested the 
Bessin, put the Norman colonies in the newly-won 
land to the sword and attacked Bayeux. But the 
" ^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 216, 217. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 241 

hopes of ^thelstan were foiled by the vigor of Will- chap. v. 
iam Longsword. Not only were the Bretons swept The 
back from the Bessin, but their land of the Coten- Srel 
tin, the great peninsula that juts into the British 901I937 
Channel, became Norman ground, while their lead- — 
er, Alan, fled over sea to the English court/ The 
choice of his refuge points to the quarter from whence 
this attack on Normandy had probably come. If 
direct attack, however, had broken down,^thelstan 
was more fortunate in the skill with which he wove 
a web of alliances round the Norman land. Flan- » 
ders was already knit to the new England through 
Count Arnulf, a grandson of Alfred, like ^thelstan 
himself. The Count of Vermandois was on close 
terms with the English king. The friendship of 
the Parisian dtichy came with the marriage of Duke 
Hugh; while Brittany was still at the king's ser- 
vice, and y^thelstan could despatch Alan again to 
carry fresh forays over the Norman border. Already 
troubled with strife within his own country, William 
Longsword saw a ring of foes close round him and 
threaten a renewal of the struggle for life. But the 
quickness and versatility of the duke were seen in 
the change of front with which he met this danger. 
The claims of the Karolingian house on his fidelity 
had ceased with the death of Charles the Simple ; 
no Karoling claimant for the throne appeared, and 
William was able, without breach of faith, to sell his 
adhesion to Rudolf of Burgundy. By doing hom- 
age to Rudolf, in 933, he not only won peace with 

* Alan was Eadward's ward, and had come, in 931, from the Eng- 
lish court. See Lappenberg, ii. 138, with the note, and p. 107, with 
note. 

16 



242 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.v. the Parisian dukes, but a formal cession of his new 
The conquests in the Cotentin; and the dissolution of 

mfrel the league left him free to deal with ^thelstan. 

9oi^937 ^^ descent of the Ostmen from Ireland on the 
Tzr shores of Northumbria warned the Enorlish kinsf of 

revolt of William's power to vex the land; and while it woke 
"Iri""^' fresh dreams of revolt in the Danelaw, encouraged 
the Scot king, Constantine, to weave anew the threads 
of the older confederacy against the English king.' 
In 934,' though the presence of the northern primate 
and some of the Danish jarls at his court show that 
Northumbria still remained true to him,' the grow- 
ing disturbance forced ^thelstan to march with an 
army into the north,* and to send a fleet to harry the 
Scottish coast. But its ravages, if they forced Con- 
stantine to a fresh submission, failed to check his in- 
trigues, or to hinder him from leaguing with Eadred 
of Bernicia and the Irish Ostmen to stir up a fresh 
rising of the Danelaw. With the Ostmen Constan- 
tine was closely connected through their leader, An- 
laf or Olaf, a son of the Northumbrian king, Sihtric, 
who had found refuge at the Scottish court on his 
father's death, and on ^thelstan's annexation of his 

' Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 352. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 934 ; (Winch.), a. 933. 

^ The grant to Worcester just before his march against " Anolafa 
rege Norrannorum qui me vita et regno privare disponit" (Cod. Dip. 
349) is attested by." Rodewoldus archiepiscopus" (a blunder for 
Wulfstan) and " Healden dux." Wulfstan is again present in a Wit- 
enagemot at Frome at the close of the year, on the king's return 
from the north, December, 934; but no northern names appear 
among the duces. — Cod. Dip. 11 10. 

* Sim. Durh., Hist. Dunelm. Feci. lib. ii. c. 18 (Twysden, p. 25). 
" Fugato deinde Oswino rege Cumbrorum et Constantino rege Scot- 
torum terrestri et navali exercitu Scotiam sibi subjugando perdo- 
muit," 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 243 

realm. Constantine had first shown the change chap, v. 
which had taken place in his poHtical sympathies by The 
giving Olaf his daughter to wafe;' and after the ear- Alfred. 
Her failure of their plans Olaf had sailed to Ireland, 901-937. 
and, placing himself at the head of the Ostmen, again — 
lent himself to the plots of the Scottish king. The 
influence of Olaf was seen in the withdrawal of the 
northern jarls from the English court within a year 
or two after the campaign of 934 ;' and when, in 937, 
he appeared with a fleet off the Northumbrian coast, 
the whole league at once rose in arms. The men 
of the northern Danelaw found themselves backed 
not only by their brethren from Ireland, but by the 
mass of states around them — by the English of Ber- 
nicia, by the Scots under Constantine, by the Welsh- 
men of Cumbria or Strathclyde. It is the steady 
recurrence of these confederacies which makes the 
struggle so significant. The old distinctions and 
antipathies of race must have already, in great part, 
passed away before peoples so diverse could have 
been gathered into one host by a common dread of 
subjection, and the motley character of the army 
pointed forward to that fusion of both Northman 
and Briton in the general body of the English race 
which was to be the work of the coming years. 

At the news of this risingf, ^thelstan a2:ain marched -^f ^"f «- 
mto the north. He met his enemies on the unknown 
field of Brunanburh," and one of the noblest of Ene- 

o^ 

' Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 352. 

^ We find no Danish names among the attesting duces through- 
out the rest of ^thelstan's reign. 

^ The Winchester and other Chronicles insert under 937 the first 
of the four poems which treat of the annals of this period, the Song 
of Brunanburh. The only other detailed account of the strife is in 
the Egils Saga (in Johnstone, Antiq. Celto-Scandicse, p. 42, etc.); 



244 ^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. V. lish war-songs has preserved the memory of the fight 
The that went on from sunrise to sunset. The stubborn- 
jiifred. ness of the combat proves that brave men fought on 
90^937 either side. The shield-wall of the Northmen stood 
— long against the swords of yEthelstan and his brother 
Eadmund ; the Scots fought on till they w^ere "weary 
with war." But the West Saxons, " in bands of cho- 
sen ones," hewed their way steadily through the mass- 
es of their foe, their Mercian fellow-warriors " refused 
not the hard hand-play," and at sunset the motley 
host broke in wild flight. " The Danes," shouts the 
exulting singer, " had no ground for laughter when 
they played on the field of slaughter with Eadward's 
children." Five of their kings and seven of their jarls 
lay among the countless dead. Olaf ' only saved his 
life by hastily shoving out his boat to sea and steer- 
ing for Dublin with the remnant of his men, while 
Constantine left his son covered with death-wounds 
in the midst of his slaughtered war-band. The old 
king's faithlessness had stirred a special hatred in 
the conquerors. " There fled he — wise as he was — 
to his northern land ! No cause had he, the hoary 
fighting man, for gladness in that fellowship of 
swords ! no cause had he, the gray-haired lord, the 
old deceiver, for boastfulness in the bill-crashing." ^ 

but the saga is of too late a date and too romantic a character to be 
used as an historical authority. The site of Brunanburh is still un- 
determined. Mr. Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 357) would fix it at Aid- 
borough ; but Mr. Freeman and Professor Stubbs abandon the effort 
to localize it in despair. The " Brunanburh " of the song becomes 
in the saga " Vinheidi," and in Simeon of Durham (Gest. Reg. and 
Hist. Dunelm.) " Wendune " and " Weondune." Flor. of Worcester 
places it by the mouth of the Humber. 

^ Skene distinguishes this Olaf of Dublin from Olaf, Sihtric's son, 
who seems to have returned to Scotland with Constantine. — Celtic 
Scotland, i. 357. - Eng. Chron. a. 937. 



severance 
of the 

North. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WESSEX AND THE DANELAW, 
937-955- 

From the battle-field of Brimanburh, where " dun The 
kite and swart raven and greedy war-hawk " were of the 
sharing the corpses with the "gray wolf of the 
wood," yEthelstan turned with a glory such as no 
English king had won. The fight, sang his court- 
singer,' was a fight such as had never been seen by 
Englishmen, " since from the east Engle and Saxon 
sought Britain over the broad sea." A hundred 
years later, indeed, men still called it " the great 
fight." ' Nor was the victory a doubtful one. " The 
two brothers, king and setheling, sought their own 
land, the land of the West Saxons, exulting in the 
war." But, victory as it was, Brunanburh marks the 
beginning of a great defeat. The national union 
which had been conceived by y^lfred, and partially 
carried out by Eadward and y^thelstan, could only 
be embodied in the king himself; it was only by a 
common obedience to one who was at once Kinof of 
the West Saxons, King of the Mercians, King of the 
Northumbrians, and Lord of the Jarls of Mid-Britain, 
that West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian, and Dane 
could forget their distinctions of locality and race, 

• Eng. Chron. a. 937. ^ ^thelweard, lib. iv. c. 5. 



246 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. and blend in a common England. Such a three- 
wessex fold kingship and lordship of the Dane y^thelstan 
Danelaw, had won in his earliest years of rule ; and the years 
g3~g of peace which had passed since the submission of 
— Northumbria seemed the beginning of a time of 
national union. But with the rising under Olaf the 
prospect of union vanished like a dream. Van- 
quished as it was, Northumbria was still strong 
enough to tear itself away from the king's personal 
grasp, and to force ^thelstan to restore its old un- 
der-kingship, with the isolated life which that king- 
ship embodied. The hard fighting of his successors, 
if it forced the north to own their supremacy, never 
succeeded in bringing it again within their personal 
sovereignty: the under -kingdom was, indeed, re- 
placed later by an earldom, but the land remained 
almost as much apart from the kingdom at large 
under earl as under under-king; and on the very 
eve of the Norman Conquest, no king's writ ran in 
the Northumbria of Siward. 
The system ^\^q scverancc of the north, in fact, was the first 

of ealdor- • 1 • 1 ^ 1 

manries. step m a proccss 01 Tcactiou which was to undo much 
that the house of Alfred had done. The growth of 
the monarchy, aided as it was by the strife against 
the Dane and by the personal energy of the kings 
themselves, had carried it beyond the actual bounds 
of English feeling. The national sentiment which 
the war had created, real as it was, was as yet too 
weak to set utterly aside the tradition of local inde- 
pendence, and to look solely to a national king. It 
had carried the monarchy, too, beyond the actual pos- 
sibilities of government. Government, as we have 
seen in ^^thelstan's efforts to restore order in Wes- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



247 



sex, rested, from the very necessities of the time, on chap, vj. 
the presence and personal action of the king. The wessex 
administrative machinery by which later rulers, Nor- Da'neiaw. 
man or Angevin, brought the land within the grasp 93^55, 
of a central power was still but in its beginning. ~~ 
Their great creation of a judicial machinery for the 
same purpose had as yet hardly an existence. The 
disorder which taxed the king's energies south of 
the Thames must have been even greater in the 
tract over which the war had rolled to the north of 
it ; and his occasional visits to Mercia or the Dane- 
law could give little of the succor which Wessex felt 
from his presence within it. It was the weight of 
these political and administrative needs that was felt 
in the second decisive step towards the disintegra- 
tion of the realm, the creation of the great ealdor- 
manries. y^lfred, indeed, had led the way in this 
creation by his raising y^thelred into the Ealdorman 
of English Mercia. But the danger of such a meas- 
ure at once disclosed itself; for though ^thelred 
acted strictly as an officer of the king, summoning 
the witan by his license, and seeking confirmation 
from him for judgment or grant, yet the tradition of 
local kingship and of individual life in the country ; 
itself raised him into a power which Eadward felt 
to be inconsistent with any union of the peoples 
round a common king. At ^thelred's death, there- 
fore, he found no successor ; and on the death of the 
Lady, his wife, Mercia was taken under the direct 
rule of the crown. The policy of Eadward was in 
his earlier years the policy of yEthelstan himself. 
There was no restoration of the Mercian ealdorman, 
still less any indication of the extension of the sys- 



Its limila 
tions. 



248 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vi. tem over other parts of the realm. With the shock 

wessex of Brunanburh, however, and with the renewed iso- 

Daneiaw. lation of northern Britain, such an extension seems 

937^55. ^^ have become inevitable; and it was in the later 

years of y^thelstan, or in the short reign of Ead- 

mund which followed, that we find the system of 

ealdormanries adopted as a necessary part of the 

organization of Britain. 

But though this revival of the old political divis- 
ions seemed the only form of organization open to 
the English kings, their subsequent measures show 
that they were not blind to its defects. If the ear- 
lier kingdoms were restored, the place of the king 
in each was taken by an ealdorman, who, however 
independent and powerful he might be, was still 
named by the West-Saxon sovereign, and could be 
deposed by that ruler and the national Witan ; while 
his relation to the folk he governed was that of a 
stranger, and had none of the strength which the 
older kings had drawn from their position as repre- 
sentatives of the blood of their races. In the sec- 
ond place, these ealdormen were bound to the West- 
Saxon throne by their own royal West-Saxon blood.' 
As we have seen, the growth of Wessex had been 
simply an extension of the West-Saxon race, and as 
a result of this its various divisions had been com- 
mitted to the charge of ealdormen chosen from the 
one royal stock. Different as were the circum- 
stances before them, ^thelstan or Eadmund fol- 
lowed the tradition of their house in committing the 
states of Mid -Britain to ealdormen of their own 
blood. Such an arrangement seemed a security 
^ Robertson, Hist. Essays, " The King's Kin." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 349 

against their reviving the claims of the folks they chap. vi. 
ruled to their old national independence, and in this wessex 
respect it was certainly successful, for from this time Danelaw, 
we hear of no attempt on the part of any of these 93^^55 
states to break away from the common English — 
realm. But, on the other hand, as the history of 
Wessex itself in the past had shown, it brought with 
it another danger. These princes of the blood, 
with the weight of their states behind them, could 
bring heavy pressure to bear on the royal govern- 
ment. Their kinship drew them into close rela- 
tions with the court, which soon became the scene 
of their struggle for supremacy and of their mutual 
rivalries, until the anarchy of early Wessex was re- 
produced in that of England under y^thelred the 
Second. 

The aim of the crown in creating^ the first of these c^-ef^j'''^ 

. , of the 

great ealdormanries, that of East Anglia,' was prob- easter7i 
ably to weaken the Danelaw by detaching from it rks! 
all that was least Danish, and that could be thor- 
oughly re-Anglicized as a portion of the English 
realm. The ealdordom was intrusted to ^thel- 
stan, a noble of the royal kin,' and stretched far be- 
yond East Anglia itself to include the old country 

^ The date of its creation is really uncertain ; but Lappenberg, 
from the Hist, of Ramsey, assigns it to -^thelstan's reign. 

^ He " exchanged his patrimonial forty hides in his native prov- 
ince of Devon for the forty hides at Hatfield, which Eadgar gave 
to Ordmaer and his wife." — Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. 179. His 
father's name was ^thelred (Cod. Dip. 338), but this "can hardly 
be the king of that name who died eighty -five years before the 
name of .^thelstan is missed from the charters." He may have 
been his grandson, ^thelstan's name " is found in connection 
with the charters of his great namesake." — Robertson, Hist. Essays, 
p. 180, with note. 



250 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



937-955. 



CHAP. VI. of the Gyrwas about the fens/ with perhaps North- 
wessex amptonshire, and the district of Kesteven. Probably 
Danelaw, about the same time was created the ealdormanry 
of the East Saxons, by the elevation of ^Ifgar, the 
father of Eadmund's queen, yEthelflaed, at Domer- 
ham," who was succeeded by Byrhtnoth as husband 
of his daughter, yElflaed. Essex' seems to have in- 
cluded, besides the shire of that name, those of Ox- 
ford and Buckingham, and also possibly that of 
Middlesex with London.* Taken together, the two 
ealdormanries formed, in fact, the kingdom of Guth- 
rum in its largest extent, and as the East-Saxon eal- 
dormen, whether from kinship or no, seem to have 
uniformly acted in union with those of East Anglia, 
.^thelstan became practically lord of all eastern 
Britain, and his nickname of the " Half-king " shows 
that he was soon recognized as a force almost equal 
to that of the crown. 

In the years that followed Brunanburh, however, 
even if any ealdormanry were as yet created, the 
results of its creation were unseen; and the care of 



Eric 

Bloody- 
axe. 



' " The diocese of Dorchester, as it existed in the tenth century, 
though once a portion of the Mercian kingdom, was not included 
under the jurisdiction of the Mercian ealdorman. The shires of 
Bedford, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton, with 
the district of Kesteven, seem to have belonged to the ealdordom 
of ^thelwine of East Anglia ; and as in the reign of ^thelred the 
reeves of Oxford and Buckingham were brought to task by Leof- 
sige, Ealdorman of Essex, the remainder of the diocese would appear 
to have been placed under the ealdorman of the East Saxons." — 
Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. i8i. The boundaries of the eastern eal- 
dormanries, however, must be regarded as very uncertain. 

= ^Ifgar died about 951-953. — Robertson. Hist. Essays, p. 189 ; E. 
Chron. a. 946. ^ See note, ante. 

* This, however, is only an inference from facts in themselves un- 
certain. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



251 



^thelstan was centred mainly in the north. As we chap^vi. 
have said, his victory was far from restoring his wessex 
original rule. Though eight years had passed since Danelaw, 
he " took to the kingdom of the Northumbrians," gsT^ss. 
the rising under Olaf showed that the attempt at a 
real union was premature, that the Danelaw over 
Humber could only still be governed through a sub- 
ject king, and he a king of northern blood. Such a 
king, however, yEthelstan had ready to hand. His 
diplomacy had long been as busy in the north as in 
the south ; and he seems to have aimed at finding 
aid against the Danes by seeking the friendship 
of the new power which had risen up among the 
Northmen of Norway. Harald Fairhair had died 
in a hoar old age on the eve of Brunanburh ; and, 
though his kingdom was disputed among his sons, 
Eric Bloody-axe got mastery of most of it. Eric 
is one of the few figures who stand out distinct for 
us from the historic darkness which covers the north. 
" Stout and comely, strong and very manly, a great 
and lucky man of war, but evil-minded, gruff, un- 
friendly, and silent," ' he and his witch-wife, Gunhild, 
whom he had found, said the legend, in the hut of 
two Lapp sorcerers, embodied all the violence and 
guile that mingled with the nobler temper of the 
Northmen. He was but a boy of twelve when his 
father gave him five long-ships, and his next four 
years were spent in Wiking cruises in the Baltic 
and the northern seas. " Then he sailed out into 
the West Sea, and plundered in Scotland, Bredand, 
Ireland, and Walland," our France, for four years 

' Harald Fairhair's Saga; Laing, Sea Kings,. i. 313. 



2^2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. more. A raid on the Finns ended these early cruises, 
wessex and won him Gunhild; and, still on the brink of 
Danelaw, manhood, he came home to be welcomed by Harald 
937^55 Fa-irhair as his successor on the throne of Norway. 
— With his brothers, who stood in his way, he dealt 
roughly. Rognwald, who was charged with witch- 
craft, " he burned in a house along with eighty other 
warlocks, which work was much praised." Biorn, 
the merchant-king, he slew drinking at his board. 
But a younger brother, Hakon, still remained, and 
when Hakon, at his father's death, promised the 
bonders their old udal rights back again, Norway 
broke out in revolt. " The news " that their rights 
were once more their own " flew like fire in dry 
grass through the whole land;'" all men streamed 
to Hakon; and Eric, left alone, had to give up the 
strife, and " sail out into the western seas with such 
as would follow him." 
Eric set It was in the days after Brunanburh that Eric's 
"^/^"X^?' plunder- raid brought him to the shores of North- 
umbria; and ^thelstan seized the chance of balanc- 
ing the Danish element in Northumbria by the Nor- 
wegian element that was mingled with it." A bargain 
was soon struck, by which Eric submitted to bap- 
tism with all his house, and received the kingdom 
of Northumbria at ^thelstan's hand on pledge to 
guard it against Danes or other Wikings.' Little 
as we know of the Danelaw, we see that the life he 

* Hakon the Good's Saga ; Laing, Sea Kings, i. 315. 

^ In 924 the peoples in Northumbria who " bowed " to Eadward 
are separately named, " either English, or Danes, or Northmen.'"— 
Eng. Chron. a. 924. 

^ For Eric, see Sagas of Harald Fairhair and of Hakon the Good 
(Laing.Sea Kings,i.30i-3o6,3i 1-316); also Saga of Egil Skallagrimson. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 353 

found there was a life as northern as that of his own chap. vi. 
northern lands, for " Northumbria," runs the saga, weseex 
" was mainly inhabited by Northmen. Since Lod- D^aneiaw. 
brog's sons had taken the country, Danes and North- ^^'^^ 
men often plundered there, when the power of the — 
land was out of their hands. . . . King Eric, too, had 
many people about him, for he kept many Northmen 
who had come with him from the east, and also many 
of his friends joined him from Norw^ay." In taking 
the land he had pledged himself to hold it " against 
Danes or other Wikings," and had received bap- 
tism, " together with his wife and children and all 
his people who had followed him." But pledge and 
Christianity sat as lightly on Eric as they sat on his 
fellow- Northmen in the Danelaw. If the Danes 
had settled down in farm and homestead, they were 
long before they ceased to vary their toil with the 
Wiking's plunder-raid; and Eric, throned as he 
was at York, was, like his subjects, a Wiking at 
heart. " As he had little lands, he went on a cruise 
every summer, and plundered in Shetland, the Heb- 
rides, Iceland, and Bretland, by which he gathered 
goods." ' 

Though ^thelstan's rule over the north had J^e^^s 
shrunk from a real sovereignty into a vague over- over-sea. 
lordship, it is notable that his efforts from this mo- 
ment were aimed at other lands than the Danelaw. 
He still remained bent on the ruin of the power which 
was able to call the Danelaw to arms. Even in the 
midst of his struggle for life with the great confed- 
eracy of the north, the king had been busy planning 
a more formidable attack than ever on the Normans. 
* Saga of Hakon the Good ; Laing, Sea Kings, i. 316, 317. 



254 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vi. During his father's last misfortunes, Lewis, the child 
wessex of Charles the Simple and of the king's sister ^^Id- 
D^eiaw. gifu, had found with his mother a refuge in Eng- 
987^55. land, and had grown up at his uncle's court. When 
— Rudolf died, and Hugh of Paris, with a cautious 
policy which time was to reward, refused to grasp 
the crown, the hearts of the West Franks turned to 
the young Karoling " over-sea," and at Hugh's insti- 
gation Lewis was chosen for their king. The envoys 
who were sent, in 936, with the offer of the crown 
found ^thelstan in his camp at York, holding down 
the earlier disaffection of the Danelaw ; but the king 
at once rode to the south, and an English embassy 
crossed the Channel to prepare for the return of 
Lewis to his father's throne. From the court of 
Duke Hugh they passed to the court of William 
Longsword, on a visit memorable as the first in- 
stance of direct political communication between 
England and Normandy. We know little of the ne- 
gotiations which ended in the duke's assent to the 
accession of the Karoling. William, no doubt, saw 
through the aim of ^thelstan in his nephew's ele- 
vation ; but to refuse Lewis was to set a stronger 
and more formidable neighbor, Hugh the Great, on 
the throne. Through the life, too, of Charles the 
Simple, the Normans had been the great support 
of the Karolingian house ; and the duke may have 
believed that, when once the crown was on his brow,, 
the old rivalry of the house of Paris would again 
throw the son of Charles, whatever were his uncle's 
plans, into the arms of the Normans. William, at 
any rate, wrung from ^thelstan a heavy price for 
his a,ssent to his nephew's crowning. Brittany had 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 255 

been one of the king's readiest weapons against the chap. vi. 
Normans ; and Alan, with a train of Breton refugees, wessex 
was still at the English court. But peace was now Danelaw, 
arranged between Breton and Norman, and Alan, 93^^55 
returning to his native land, pledged himself to ~ 
keep peace with William Longsword. 

With what aims y^thelstan had set his nephew Lewis anc^i 
on the French throne, the action of Lewis was to 
show. The boy had sworn to follow the counsels of 
his nobles, and in the first days of his reign he sub- 
mitted to the guidance of Duke Hugh. But the 
victory of Brunanburh soon followed his return, and 
-^thelstan was now free to give his whole support to 
his nephew's cause. The certainty of English aid at 
once gave a new energy to the young king's action. 
He broke utterly from his father's policy. Instead 
of relying on the Normans against the pressure of 
the house of Paris, he stood aloof from both these 
powers. He declared himself independent of Hugh, 
and summoned from England his English mother 
to give into her charge his royal city of Laon. The 
hand of the English king was seen in the political 
combinations that followed this step. Between the 
lands of yEthelstan's cousin, Arnulf of Flanders, and 
the Norman duchy lay the county of Ponthieu, 
then probably, as at a later time, an outpost of the 
Norman power. In 939 Count Herlwin of Ponthieu 
was attacked by Arnulf, his city of Montreuil taken, 
and his wife and children, who were found in it, sent 
as prisoners to ^thelstan " to be kept in hold over 
sea." The attack was possibly made with the aid of 
an English fleet which we shall soon see busy in the 
Ghannel; and that it was really aimed at the Nor- 



256 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. mans we gather from the action of their duke, for 
wessex William Longsword at once marched on Montreuil, 
Danelaw, recovered the town, and ravaged Arnulf's borders. 
937^55 ^^^ "^^^ ^^^^ Arnulf, however, threatened to widen 
— into the larger contest which yEthelstan had no 
doubt designed. Lewis drew towards the foes of 
the Normans ; his bishops excommunicated William 
Longsword ; and their sentence seemed the prelude 
for a joint attack of the two kings and the count on 
the Northmen in France. 
Faz/iire But, at tlic momcnt of their execution, the com- 
/ea^ite. biuatious of the English king were again frustrated 
by a turn in Prankish politics. The old loyalty of 
Lorraine to the house of Charles the Great revived 
at the sight of a Karolingian sovereign at Laon. On 
the coronation of Otto as King of the East Franks 
at Aachen, Lorraine threw off the German rule ; and 
though Lewis rejected the first offer of its allegiance, 
he yielded to a second. The war with Otto, which 
naturally followed, drew all the efforts of the Frank- 
ish king from Normandy to his eastern borderland, 
where for a time Lorraine passed into the hands of 
Lewis. But his winning of it caused a sudden chancre 
in the position of the young king in Frankland 
itself. He had for three years stood aloof from the 
control of the Parisian duke, and now the addition 
of Lorraine to his realm threatened Hugh with a 
master too great for his power to check. Parisian 
duke and Norman duke, both equally threatened by 
the king, drew together against their common enemy 
at the moment when his force was spent by the con- 
test for Lorraine ; and their league was soon joined 
by a prince of almost equal strength. If Arnulf 



THE CONQUEST- OF ENGLAND. 257 

of Flanders dreaded the growth of Normandy, he chai^vi. 
dreaded vet more the srrowth of a royal power "Wessex 

, 1 .r . . 1-1 and the 

strong enough to curb the new states which were Danelaw, 
parting western Frankland between them ; and the 937I955, 
winning of Lorraine by the young king drew him, 
like his fellow^s, into revolt. But, though the ambi- 
tion of Lewis had foiled the policy of ^thelstan, 
the king clung to his nephew's cause. When rumors 
of Arnulf's approaching defection and of the attack 
he was planning on Laon reached England, an Eng- 
lish fleet with forces on board appeared off the coast 
of Boulogne. Its ravages, however, failed to turn 
Arnulf from his purpose ; and on the news that, in 
the face of these dangers, Lewis was still fairly hold- 
ing his own in Lorraine, it fell back to its English 
harbor. 

The recall of the fleet may have been due to the Eadmtcnd. 
failing health of ^thelstan ; for on the twenty-sev- 
enth of October, 940,' in the midst of these wide 
projects, the king died at Gloucester ; and the 
troubles which followed the succession of his brother 
Eadmund left little room for a display of energy 
across the sea. Though he had fought by ^thel- 
stan's side at Brunanburh, Eadmund, a child of Ead- 
ward's third marriage with Eadgifu,' was a youth of 
eighteen when he mounted the throne. But he had 
already a policy of his own, and that a policy distinct 
from the system of ^thelstan.' " He was no friend 

' So the later Chronicles, probably from a lost annal in the Wor- 
cester copy. The Winchester Chronicle dates it 941. 

" ^thelstan was the only son of Eadward's first marriage ; both 
his sons by a second were dead ; there remained two young sons 
by his third, Eadmund and Eadred. 

^ In ^thelstan's later years, after some more experiments, such 

17 



2^8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. to the Northmen,'" or to the system of balances by 
wessex which his brother had used the Norwegians of the 
D?neS^w. Danelaw to hold down the Danes. Eric, too, was in 
937^55 ^^ favor with him. As southern England became 
— day by day a realm more peaceful and highly or- 
ganized, the instincts of its statesmen must have 
revolted more and more from the wild barbarism of 
the north, where Eric, with his false and cruel Gun- 
hild beside him, remained, in spite of his baptism, 
the mere pirate he had landed. So " the word went 
about that King Eadmund would set another chief 
over Northumbria." The threat was enough for 
Eric, who set off on new cruises of piracy, only 
now adding the English coast to his former field of 
prey; and at his departure the Danelaw rose once 
more against the English king. 
The rising f j^g rcvolt was cvcu morc formidable than that 

of the 

Danelaw, which ^E^thclstan had faced at Brunanburh, for the 
rapidity with w^hich the English army met Olaf and 
Constantine on that bloody field seems to have pre- 
vented the general rising of the English Danelaw 

as in 935, " basileus Anglorum et aeque totius Britanniae orbis cu- 
ragulus" (Cod. Dip. 11 11), or in 937, "rex Anglorum et seque totius 
Albionis gubernator" (Cod. Dip. 11 14; it is notable that he never 
recurs to his " Imperator " and " Brytenwealda "), the royal style had 
at last settled down into a single form. From 938, at any rate, it is 
almost uniformly " Basileus Anglorum cunctarumque gentium in 
circuitu persistentium," and the signature, "rex totius Britanniae " 
(Cod. Dip., a series of charters from 11 16 to 11 23, etc.). Eadmund 
adopts and generally uses the same description, though breaking 
out here and there, as in 940, into " rex Anglorum et curagulus 
multarum gentium " (Cod. Dip. 384), or in 941, " regni Anglorum ba- 
sileus" (he signs here, "totius Britanniae rex;" Cod. Dip. 1 139), or 
in 946, "rex Anglorum necnon et Merciorum " (Cod. Dip. 409), but 
signs almost uniformly " rex Anglorum." 
1 Hakon's Saga; Laing, Sea Kings, i. 317- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 359 

on which the Ostmen had reckoned. But with a chap.vi. 
boy-king on the throne the spell of terror which the wessex 
great defeat had thrown over the north was broken; D^aneSw. 
the Danes again called for aid from their kinsmen 93^^55 
in Ireland; and on the reappearance of Olaf in the — 
Humber in 941 the Danelaw took fire.' The rising- 
was not merely a rising of the Danes north of Hum- 
ber, for, after twenty years of quiet submission to 
the English rule, even the men of the Five Boroughs 
now threw off their allegiance and joined their kins- 
men in Northumbria in taking Olaf for king; and 
the danger was heightened by an unlooked-for de- 
fection from the royal cause. In his appointment 
of Wulfstan to the primacy at York in 934 yEthel- 
stan had trusted to secure a firm support for his 
rule in the north. We have already noted the new 
and independent position which had been given to 
the see of York by its isolation from the rest of the 
English Church. Its occupant became, in fact, even 
more the religious centre of northern Britain than 
the Primate of Canterbury was as yet of southern 
Britain ; and as the pagan settlers yielded to Chris- 
tian influences, he rose to still greater importance as 
the natural centre of union between Englishman 
and Dane. The quick revolutions in the northern 
kingship, as well as its occasional parting between 
two rulers, must have still further heightened the 
position of a spiritual head who remained unaffected 



^ The Winchester Chronicle, a. 942, gives here a fragment of a sec- 
ond poem on the deeds of Eadmund. As to Olaf, or Anlaf, Mr. Skene 
thinks this Olaf to be the King of Dublin, and that on his death, soon 
after, Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 942, he was succeeded by the second 
Olaf, Sihtric's son, from Scotland. — Celtic Scotland, i. 361. 



26o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. by these changes; and in Archbishop Wulfstan the 
wessex power of the primate rivalled the temporal authority 
DanVaw. of the northern kings. Till now, Wulfstan's influ- 
937^55 ^^^^ ^^d ^^^'^ steadily exerted in support of the 
— English sovereignty ; though the names of the Dan- 
ish jarls are absent from ^^thelstan's later Witena- 
gemots, Archbishop Wulfstan was still present at 
the English court; and in the opening of Ead- 
mund's reign his attitude seems to have remained 
the same. He joined with his fellow -primate to 
avert a conflict between the king and the Danes 
at Lincoln ; and even in 942 we find him at Ead- 
mund's court' But whether he was swept away by 
the strength of local feeling or alienated by the 
king's West-Saxon policy, at this moment his course 
suddenly changed. Not only did he adopt the 
northern cause as his own, but in the after-struggle 
he stood side by side with Olaf as commander of 
the northern host. 
Ead- Not content with freeing Northumbria, the Ost- 

miiiid's de- , . . . . -n/r'i-n"' i 

feat, men and primate burst m 943 mto Mid-rJritam, and 
their storm of Tamworth and of Leicester gave 
them the valley of the Trent. Eadmund was strong 
enough to regain the last city, and Wulfstan and 
Olaf had some diiHculty in escaping from his grasp; 
but the work of even Eadward was undone, and, af- 
ter two years of hard fighting, the primates of York 
and Canterbury negotiated a peace, in which Olaf 
bowed to baptism and owned himself Eadmund's 
under-king, but which practically left Eadmund mas- 



^ " Wulfstan archiepiscopus urbis Eboracse metropolitanus " attests 
a royal grant in 942. — Cod. Dip. 392. 



937-955. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 26 1 

ter only of the realm that Alfred had ruled.' The chap. vr. 
revival of the English Danelaw was the more for- w^ex 
midable that with it went a revival of the Norman D^ejaw 
power across the sea. The death of ^thelstan had 
been as disastrous to his nephew as to his brother. 
It left Lewis friendless at a moment when the war 
on his eastern border turned suddenly against him, 
and he was driven by Otto from Lorraine. Pressed 
hard even in his own Frankland by Hugh the 
Great and Herbert of Vermandois, deserted by Ar- 
nulf of Flanders, the young king was thrown back 
on the policy of his father. He looked for aid to 
the Normans ; and William Longsword was as ready 
to return to the policy of Hrolf as Lewis to that of 
Charles the Simple. Lewis was saved from ruin by 
Norman help ; his fortunes were restored by the 
Norman sword ; Norman diplomacy brought about 
a peace with Otto and a reconciliation with Hugh. 
The power which y^thelstan had threatened with 
destruction stood forward as the leading power in 
West Frankland ; and the greatness of Normandy 
gave encouragement and, it may be, direct aid to the 
struggle of the Danelaw against Eadward's son. 

But if wider hopes of common action dawned on J^^^overy 

. . of the 

the Northmen, they were foiled at this moment of Daneiaio. 
triumph by the murder of the Norman duke ; for 
the wild vigor which had been turned into fighting 
power by William Longsword crumbled into an- 
archy as soon as his grasp was loosed ; and his son 
Richard, a child of ten years old, was hardly seated 
in the ducal chair, in 943, when strife broke out be- 

* Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 943. 



262 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. tween the Normans who drew towards the religion 
wessex and civilization of the land in which they had settled, 
D^aneiaw. ^.nd thosc who Still clung to the old worship and 
937^55. traditions of the north. Lewis, thankless for the 
— aid which had saved him, swung back at once to his 
older purpose, and seized the opening which the 
strife gave him for carrying out those plans of con- 
quest over the Normans which had been so fatally 
interrupted by his schemes on Lorraine. His suc- 
cess was complete, for, marching upon Rouen under 
pretext of aiding the young duke against the pagan 
reaction, he became master of the whole of Nor- 
mandy without a blow. The sudden turn of affairs 
' in France may have told on the other side of the 
Channel; it was, at any rate, at this juncture, in 
944, that Eadmund rallied to a new attack on the 
Danelaw; and it was while Normandy lay at the 
feet of Lewis that he succeeded in driving out 
Olaf, Sihtric's son, and in again reducing it to sub- 
mission.' 

Cumbria But the mcasurcs which followed its conquest 
'^ 1111 • 

Strath- showed that the young kmg possessed the political 

"•^ ^* as well as the military ability of his house. What 
most hindered the complete reduction of the Dane- 
law was the hostility to the English rule of the states 
north of it, the hostility of Bernicia, of Strathclyde, 
and, above all, of the Scots. The confederacy 
against ^thelstan had been brought together by 
the intrigues of the Scot king, Constantine; and 
though Constantine, in despair at his defeat, left the 
throne for a monastery, the policy of his son Mal- 

* He drove out its two kings — Olaf, Sihtric's son, and Ragnald, son 
of Sihtric's brother, Guthferth. — Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 944. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 363 

colm was much the same as his father's.' Eadmund chap. vi. 
was no sooner master of the Danelaw than he dealt wessex 
with this difficulty in the north. The English blood Danelaw, 
of the Bernicians was probably drawing them at last 93^55 
to the English monarch, for after Brunanburh we — 
hear nothing of their hostility. But Cumbria was 
far more important than Bernicia, for it was through 
Cumbrian territory that the Ostmen could strike 
most easily across Britain into the Danelaw. The 
Cumbria, however, with which Eadmund dealt was 
far from being the old Cumbrian kingdom from the 
Eden to the Ribble, the southern part of which 
remained attached to the Northumbrian kingdom, 
even in the hands of the Danes, while the northern 
part, now known as Westmoringa-land — the land of 
the men of the western moors — had been colonized 
by Norwegian settlers."" 

Though a frag-ment of the Cumbrian kino;dom Thejand 

, ^. of the 

which the sword of Ecgfrith had made ' remained Western 
to the last in the hands of Northumbria, its bounds 
had been cut shorter and shorter. Under Eadberht 
the Northumbrian supremacy had reached as far as 
the district of Kyle in Ayrshire ; and the capture of 
Alclwyd by his allies, the Picts, in 756, seemed to 
leave the rest of Strath-Clyde at his mercy. But 
from that moment the tide had turned ; a great de- 
feat shattered Eadberht's hopes ; and in the anarchy 
which followed his reign district after district must 
have been torn from the weakened grasp of North- 

^ Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 360, 361. 

^ In 966, "Thored, Gunner's son, harried Westmoringa-land." 
— Eng. Chron. a. 966. 

^ Between 670-675. See Making of England, p. 358.— (A. S. G.) 



264 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP.vf. umbria, till the cessation of the line of her bishops 
w^ex at Whithern' tells that her frontier had been push- 
iSfeiaw. ed back almost to Carlisle. But even after the land 
937^55 ^^^^ remained to her had been in English posses- 
— sion for nearly a century and a half, it was still no 
English land. Its great land-owners were of English 
blood," and as the Church of Lindisfarne was richly 
endowed here, its priesthood was probably English 
too. But the conquered Cumbrians had been left 
by Ecgfrith on the soil, and in its local names we 
find few traces of any migration of the Engle over 
the moors from the east. There was little, indeed, 
to invite settlers, save along the valleys of the Lune 
or the Ribble ; elsewhere the huge and almost un- 
broken stretch of woodland and moorland and marsh 
which covered our Lancashire must have been al- 
most as wild and unpeopled as the dales scattered 
among the " Western - Moors," where St. Hubert 
found a " desert " for his hermitage. Carlisle, in- 
deed, had carried on an unbroken life from its 
Roman and Celtic days ; but it is doubtful wheth- 
er life had as yet returned to the "ceaster" on the 
Lune, our Lancaster ; and it was not till the tenth 
century that Eadward could set up his fort amidst 
the ruins of Mancunium. 
The The "parting," however, of Deira in 876 among 
7ettierr Halfdcnc's warriors drove English fugitives for ref- 
use into the desert land. One such we see in a 
certain y^lfred, who "came, fearing the pirates, over 



> Badulf, the last bishop of Whithern of the Anglo-Saxon succes- 
sion whose name is preserved, was consecrated in 791. Sim. Durh 
ad. ann. — (A. S. G.) 

* Robertson, Scotland under Early Kings, ii. 434. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



265 



the western hills, and sought pity from S. Cuthbert chap. vi. 
and Bishop Cutheard, praying that they should give wessex 
him some lands."' But it was only to meet other D^neiaw. 
assailants. Along the Irish Channel the boats of 93^55 
the Norwegian pirates were as thick as those of the — 
Danish corsairs on the eastern coast ; and the Isle 
of Man, which they had conquered and half col- 
onized, served as a starting-point from which the 
marauders made their way to the opposite shores. 
Their settlements reached as far northward as Dum- 
friesshire, and southward, perhaps, to the little group 
of northern villages which we find in the Cheshire 
peninsula of the Wirral. But it is in the Lake dis- 
trict and in the north of our Lancashire that they 
lie thickest." Ormside and Ambleside, Kettleside 
and Silverside, recall the "side" or settle of Orm 
and Hamel, of Ketyl and Soelvar, as Ulverston and 
Ennerdale tell of Olafr and Einar. Buthar survives 
in Buttermere, Geit in Gatesgarth, and Skogul in 
Skeggles Water. The Wikings Solvar and Boll 
and Skall may be resting beneath their " haugr " 
or tomb-mound at Silver How, Bull How, and Scale 
How.^ 

While this outlier of northern life was beino^ Ciunbria 

^IVSH to 

planted about the lakes, the Britons of Strath-Clyde Makoim. 
were busy pushing their conquests to the south ; in 

' Sim. Durh., Hist. S. Cuthb. (Twysden), p. 74. 

^ " The Lake district seems to have been almost exclusively peo- 
pled by Celts and Norwegians. The Norwegian suffixes, gill, garth, 
haugh, thwaite, foss, and fell, are abundant ; while the Danish forms, 
thorpe and toft, are almost unknown ; and the Anglo-Saxon test- 
words, ham, ford, worth, and ton, are comparatively rare." — Taylor, 
Words and Places, p. 115. 

^ Ibid. 116. For the Norwegian settlements in the lakes, see 
Ferguson's Northmen in Cumberland and Westmoreland. 



266 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. Eadmund's day, indeed, we find their border carried 
wessex as far as the Derwent;' but whether from the large 
DMieiaw. space of Cumbrian ground they had won, or no, the 
937^55 '^^.me of Strath-Clyde from this time disappears, and 
— is replaced by the name of Cumbria." Whether as 
Strath-Clyde or Cumbria, its rulers had been among 
the opponents of the West -Saxon advance; they 
were among the confederates against Eadward as 
they were among the confederates against ^thel- 
stan ; and it was no doubt in return for a like 
junction in the hostilities against himself that 
Eadmund, in 945, " harried all Cumberland." But 
he turned his new conquest adroitly to account by 
using it to bind to himself the most dangerous 
among his foes ; for he granted the greater part of 
it to the Scottish king, on the terms that Malcolm 
should be "his fellow - worker by sea and land."' 
In the erection of this northern dependency we see 
the same forces acting, though on a more distant 
field, which had already begun the disintegration 
of the English realm in the formation of the great 
ealdormanries of the eastern coast. Its immediate 
results, however, were advantageous enough. Scot 
and Welshman, whose league had till now formed 
the chief force of opposition to English supremacy 
in the north, were set at variance ; the road of the 
Ostmen was closed, while the fidelity of the Scot- 
king seemed to be secured by the impossibility of 

^ Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 362. 

^ Westmoringa-land survives, little changed in area, in our West- 
moreland ; our Cumberland is the fragment of the Strath-Clyde or 
Cumbrian kingdom which remained to England after the rest had 
gone to the Scottish kings. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 945. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 267 

holding Cumbria against revolt without the support chap. vi. 
of his "fellow-worker" in the south. wessex 

Hard as Eadmund had been pressed by these Danelaw, 
outer troubles, he had been far from neglecting 93^55 
the work of government at home. While the efforts -— 
of ^thelstan had been mainly directed to the se- 
curity of order and of property, Eadmund dealt 
with the more formidable difficulty of the right of 
feud. The evil with which he dealt, and his at- 
tempts to reform it, have been already noticed in 
the sketch given of the history of English justice.' 
In spite of all bounds and limitations by which the 
rights of private vengeance had been restrained, the 
feud in Eadmund's day remained wholly incompati- 
ble with the new social order that had been de- 
veloped alike' by Christianity and by the growing 
sense of a common national life. Early justice 
had rested on the family bond, on the theory of the 
kinsfolk bound together by ties of mutual responsi- 
bility for vengeance and aid in self-defence. But 
as society became more complex it outgrew in great 
measure these earlier ties of blood ; and the con- 
ception of personal responsibility which Christianity 
had taught helped to weaken the bonds of kinship. 
Eadmund shared in the " horror of the unrighteous 
and manifold fightings " which was felt in his day, 
and in his attempt to lay on the man-slayer himself 
the whole burden of his deed, to free his kinsfolk 
from the obligation of bearing the feud, and to pro- 
tect them from the vengeance of the slain man's 
kin," he not only attacked the custom of the feud, 

' See ch. i. pp. 23-27. 

" LI. Eadmund : Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 249. 



268 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. but struck a heavy blow at the old theory of kinship, 

wossex with its traditional responsibilities. 

DaneSw. From questions of home government, however, 

937^55 ^^^ young king was soon called back to outer 

— ■ , affairs. For the moment the triumphs of the two 

Death of • i r i r^^ 

Eadmund.Q,oM^\VL's> on Cither sidc of the Channel seemed to 
have realized the hopes of yEthelstan. In England 
and France alike the men of the north lay at the 
feet of Lewis and Eadmund, for the presence of 
the northern primate and northern Jarls at the 
English court, for the first time since Brunanburh, 
showed that the Danelaw was again subdued.' But 
the Danelaw had hardly given its allegiance to 
Eadmund when a sudden revolution wrested Nor- 
mandy from his cousin's grasp. A fleet, under the 
King of Denmark, Harald Blaatand, moored off 
the Cotentin and called the country to arms. The 
Normans gathered round the Danish host, while 
Duke Hugh, jealous of the power Lewis had won 
from his conquest on the Seine, joined the king's 
foes ; and in 945 a victory of their united forces on 
the Dive broke the Frankish yoke. Not only was 
the king's army defeated, but Lewis himself was 
taken in the fight and given as a prisoner into the 
hands of Duke Hugh. The demand of Eadmund 
for his cousin's liberation shows that the two kings 
had been acting in concert against the Northmen, 
while the answer of Hugh is notable as the first of 
a series of such defiances which from that day to 
this have passed between the lands on either side 
of the Channel. " I will do nothing for the English- 

» For Wulfstan, see Cod. Dip. 409. For the Jarls "Scule" and 
" Halfdene," Cod. Dip. 410. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 269 

men's threats !" said the duke. " Let them come,, chap, vi. 
and they will soon find what men of the Franks wessex 
are worth in fight ! or, if they fear to come, they Daneiaw. 
shall know at some time or other the might of the 93^55, 
Franks and pay for their arrogance !" Master of 
all England at twenty-four, Eadmund could hardly 
have passed by a challenge such as this. But the 
quarrel was suddenly hushed by his death.' As he 
feasted at Pucklechurch, in the May of 946, Leofa, 
a robber whom the king had banished from the 
land, entered the hall, seated himself at the royal 
board, and drew his sword on the cup - bearer when 
he bade him retire. Eadmund sprang in wrath 
to his thegn's aid, and seizing Leofa by the hair 
flung him to the ground, but in the struggle the 
robber drove his dagger to the king's heart. 

With the death of Eadmund a new figure comes Dnnstan. 
to the front of English affairs, and the story of Ab- 
bot Dunstan of Glastonbury gives us a welcome 
glimpse into the inner life of England at a time 
when history hides it from us beneath the weary 
details of wars with the Danes.' In the heart of 

^ Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 496 ; Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), 
i. 228. 

"^ The primary authority for Dunstan 's life is an anonymous biog- 
raphy, written about A. D. 1000, a few years after his death, by a 
Saxon priest. Professor Stubbs, who has collected the various bi- 
ographies in his " Memorials of S. Dunstan," has made it probable 
that this is a work of an exiled scholar from Liege, who was present 
in England at the archbishop's death, and was living under his pro- 
tection. A second work, by Adelard of Ghent, was drawn up in 
the form of lessons to be read in the service of the monastery at 
Canterbury, and is hardly of later date than the first. After the 
Conquest a third life, much expanded, was drawn up by Osbern, 
and a fourth by Eadmer, both monks of Canterbury, while a little 
later on William of Malmesbury compiled a fifth, whose purpose 



2 70 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vr. Somerset, at the base of the Tor, a hill that rose 

wessex out of the wastc of flood-drowned fen which then 

Danelaw, filled the valley of Glastonbury, lay in y^thelstan's 

937^55. *^^y ^^^ estate of Heorstan, a man of wealth and 

noble blood, the kinsman of three bishops of the 

time and of many thegns of the court, if not of the 

king himself.' It was in Heorstan's hall that his 

son Dunstan, as yet a fair, diminutive child, with 

scant but beautiful hair, caught the passion for 

music that showed itself in his habit of carrying 

harp in hand on journey or visit, as in his love for 

the " vain songs of ancient heathendom, the trifling 

legends, and funeral chants,'" relics, doubtless, of a 

mass of older poetry that time has reft from us. 

was to bring out more fully Dunstan's connection with Glaston- 
bury. Even in the few years that passed between Dunstan's death 
and the life by Adelard a luxuriant growth of legend had taken 
place ; but it is to the three last biographers that the wilder stories 
which gathered round the archbishop's name are mainly due. The 
life by the priest of Liege is simply disfigured by verbosity, and 
bears traces of deriving most of the earlier biographic details from 
the talk of Dunstan himself ; its information and its silences (as in 
the history of Eadgar) are both probably due to this source. But 
even this antedates the monastic struggle, which had become so 
important at the time of its composition, by confusing it with the 
strife in Eadwig's reign (Memor. S. Dunstan, Introd. p. vii.). Such 
as they are, however, all these lives are of value for a time when we 
have, save in the meagre annals of the Chronicle, no contemporary 
materials but these and a few other hagiographies (Stubbs, Me- 
mor. S. Dunstan, Introd. p. ix.). 

' Bishop Elfege of Winchester and Kynsige of Lichfield were 
his kinsmen (see Saxon biographer. Memorials, pp. 13, 32). So, 
says Adelard (ibid. 55), was Archbishop ^Ethelm of Canterbury; 
but this may be a mistake for Bishop .^thelgar of Crediton. For 
his kin among the " Palatini," see Sax. biogr., Memor. p. 11. ^thel- 
flsed, ^thelstan's niece, was also related to him (ibid. 17). 

^ Sax. biogr. (Memor. p. 1 1), " avitae gentilitatis vanissima didicisse 
carmina, et historiarum frivolas colere incantationum nsenias." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



271 



But nobler strains than those of ancient heathen- chap, vi. 
dom were round the child as he grew to boyhood/ wessex 
Alfred's strife with the Northmen was fresh in the Daneiaw, 
memory of all. Athelney lay a few miles off across 93^^55 
the Polden hills ; and Wedmore, where the final 
frith was made and the chrism-fillet of Guthrum un- 
loosed, rose out of the neighboring marshes. Mem- 
ories of Ine met the boy as he passed to school at 
Glastonbury, which still remained notable as a place 
of pilgrimage, though but a few secular priests clung 
to the house which the king had founded, and its 
lands had for the most part been stripped from it."" 
The ardor of Dunstan's temper was seen in the 
eagerness with which he plunged into the study of 
letters ; and his knowledge became at last so famous 
in the neighborhood that news of it reached the 
court. Dunstan was called there, no doubt, as one 



' The date of his birth is a vexed question. " Hujus (^thelstani) 
imperii temporibus oritur puer," says the Saxon biographer (Memor. 
p. 6). The English Chronicle (though in what is probably a later 
insertion) takes " oritur "' for " is born," and with all after-writers 
places his birth in -^thelstan's first year, 924 or 925. But if so, his 
appearance and expulsion from ^thelstan's court must have been 
before he was sixteen ; his appointment as Abbot of Glastonbury, at 
any rate, before Eadmund's death in 946, when he was still but 
twenty-two, and his career as guide and counsellor of Eadred, must 
have been between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-one. This 
seems very improbable, and the "oritur" may, perhaps, be fairly 
construed " rises into notice," which would throw back his birth 
into the days of Eadward. Granting this, Adelard's statement that 
Archbishop .^Ethelm, who died in the same year with Eadward, 
first brought him to court, may be true (Memor. p. 55, and Introd. 
p. Ixxviii.). 

^ It had a church " built by no art of man," to which yEthelstan 
went on pilgrimage, and where " Hiberniensium perigrini" came to 
visit the tomb of a younger Patrick, bringing their books with 
them, which Dunstan read (Sax. biogr., Memor. pp. 7, 10, 11). 



272 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vi. of the young nobles who received their training in 
wessex attendance on the king during boyhood and early 
Danelaw, youth ; ' but his appearance was the signal for a 
937^55. burst of jealousy among the royal thegns, though 
many were kinsmen of his own ; he was forced to 
withdraw, and when he was again summoned, on the 
accession of Eadmund, his rivals not only drove him 
from the king's train, but threw him from his horse 
as he rode through the marshes, and with the wild 
passion of their rage trampled him underfoot in the 
mire.' 
fotofGias- ^^^ outrage brought fever, and in the bitterness 
ionhiry. of disappointment and shame Dunstan rose from his 
bed of sickness a monk.' But in England the mo- 
nastic profession was at this time little more than a 
vow of celibacy and clerical life," and his devotion 
took no ascetic turn. His nature, in fact, was sun- 
ny, versatile, artistic, full of strong affections, and 
capable of inspiring others with affections as strong. 
Throughout his life he won the love of women, and 
in these earlier years of retirement at Glastonbury 
he became the spiritual guide of a woman of high 
rank who lived only for charity and the entertain- 
ment of pilgrims. " He ever clave to her and loved 
her in wondrous fashion." Quick-witted, of tena- 
cious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and 
genial of address, an artist, a musician, an indefati- 

^ His age shows that this must be the meaning of the Saxon 
biographer's " inter regies proceres et palatinos principes electus " 
(Memor. p. 21). 

^ Sax. biogr. (Memor. p. 12). 

' Ibid. 14. He had been tonsured as a clerk from boyhood 
(p. 10). 

* See Stubbs, Memor. S. Dunstan, Introd. p. Ixxxiii.-lxxxv. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



m 



gable worker alike at books or handicraft, his sphere chap, vi. 
of activity widened as the wealth of his devotee was wessex 
placed unreservedly at his command. We see him Danelaw, 
followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, 93^55 
harping, painting, designing. In one pleasant tale — 
of these days a lady summons him to her house to 
design a robe which she is embroidering, and as 
Dunstan bends with her maidens over their toil, the 
harp which he has hung on the wall sounds, without 
mortal touch, tones which the startled ears around 
frame into a joyous antiphon. But the tie which 
bound Dunstan to this scholar-life was broken by 
the death of his patroness ; and towards the close of 
Eadmund's reign the young scholar was again called 
to the court. Even in vElthelstan's day he seems 
to have been known to both the younger sons of 
Eadward the Elder; and with one of these, Eadred, 
his friendship became of the closest kind. But the 
old jealousies revived ; his life was again in danger ; 
and the game seemed so utterly lost that Dunstan 
threw himself on the protection of some envoys 
who had come at this time from the German court 
of Otto to the English king.' He was preparing to 
return with them to their home in Saxony when an 
unlooked-for chance restored him suddenly to pow- 
er. A red-deer which Eadmund was chasing; over 
Mendip dashed down the Cheddar cliffs, and the 
king only checked his horse on the brink of the 
ravine. In the bitterness of anticipated death he 
had repented of his injustice to Dunstan, and on 

^ " Regni orientis nuncii cum rege tunc hospitantes." — Sax. biogr. 
(Memor. p. 23). I follow the suggestion of Professor Stubbs as to 
this " Eastern Realm." 



2 74 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vi. his return from the chase the young priest was sum- 
wessex moned to his presence. " Saddle your horse," said 
Danelaw. Eadmund, " and ride with me !" The royal train 
937^55. swept over the marshes to Dunstan's home, and 
greeting him with the kiss of peace, the king seated 
him in the abbot's chair, as Abbot of Glastonbury.' 
Eadred. From that moment Dunstan may have exercised 
some influence on public affairs ; but it was not till 
Eadmund's murder that his influence became su- 
preme. Eadmund was but twenty- five years old 
when he died; and as his children, Eadwig and 
Eadgar, were too young to follow him on the throne, 
the crown passed to his last surviving brother, the 
i^theling Eadred.' Eadred had long been bound 
by a close friendship to Dunstan ; and a friendship 
as close bound the young abbot to the mother of 
the king, the wife of Eadward the Elder, who seems 
to have wielded the main influence at Eadred's 
court. It was of even greater moment that Dun- 
stan seems to have been linked by a close intimacy 
with the "Half-King" ^thelstan. The fact that 
yEthelstan's wife, ^E^lfwen, is said to have been the 
foster-mother of Eadgar,' as well as his own eleva- 
tion, proves the influence of the East-Anglian eal- 
dorman in the reign of Eadmund ; he was, in fact, 
already " Primarius," ' a post which reminds us of 

' Kemble places this before 940. on faith of a charter (Cod. Dip. 
384) of that year; but Professor Stubbs regards his signature as a 
later insertion. He certainly signed as abbot in 946 (Cod. Dip. 41 1), 
and his nomination was probably not much earlier (Stubbs, Memor. 
S. Dunstan, Introd. p. Ixxx.). 

'^ Eng. Chron. a. 946. ^ Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. 180. 

" Sax. biogr. (Memor. S. Dunstan, p. 44). "Cujusdam primarii 
ducis, utpote ^Ifstani ;" and again, "prsedicto comitante secum 
Primario." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 375 

the office of yElfred as " Secundarius," as possibly cHAP.vr. 
a germ of the later Justiciarship, and which at any wessex 
rate placed him near to the king himself in the Danelaw, 
government of the realm. Under Eadred his influ- 93^55 
ence becamxC yet greater ; he seems to have displaced 
Wulfgar, whose signature through Eadmund's days 
had preceded his own, as the leading counsellor 
of the crown, and signs first of all secular nobles 
through the coming reign.' It was with the sup- 
port of y^thelstan that Dunstan from this moment 
stood among Eadred's advisers. 

Of his political work indeed we know little, but J^f-^""'" 

'^ . , . J old realm. 

we can hardly mistake his hand in the solemn proc- 
lamation which announced the king's crowning at 
Kingston.' The crowning of Eadred indeed was a 
fresh step forward towards a national kingship. His 
election was the first national election, the first elec- 
tion by a witenagemot where Briton and Dane and 
Englishmen were alike represented, where Welsh 
under-kings and Danish jarls sate side by side with 

' See the charters of these reigns in the Codex Diplomaticus. 

"^ Cod. Dip. 411, a grant to the "pedisequus" Wulfric, apparently 
one of a number of coronation grants, at any rate of the first year, 
" quo sceptra diadematum Angul - Saxna cum Nordhymbris et 
Paganorum cum Brettonibus (Eadredus) gubernabat," is prefaced 
by what looks like a general proclamation of the new sovereign. 
" Concedente gratia Dei . . . contigit post obitum Eadmundi regis, 
qui regimina regnorum Angul-Saxna, et Nordhymbra, Paganorum 
Brettonumque, septem annorum intervallo regaliter gubernabat, 
quod Eadred frater ejus uterinus, electione optimatum subrogatus, 
pontificali auctoritate eodem anno catholice est rex et rector ad 
regna quadripartiti regiminis consecratus, qui denique rex in villa 
quse dicitur regis, Cyngestun, ubi consecratio peracta est, plura plu- 
rimis perenniter condonavit carismata." This is attested by the 
tv/o archbishops, Odo and Wulfstan, ten bishops, " Howael regulus, 
Marcant, Cadmo," and by " Urm, Imorcer eorl, Grim, Andcoll eorl," 
and " Dunstan abbud." 



276 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, VI. English nobles and bishops. His coronation was in 
wessex the Same way the first national coronation, the first 
Danelaw, union of the primate of the north and the primate 
937^55 °^ ^^^^ south in setting the crown on the head of 
— one who was to rule from the Forth to the Chan- 
nel." In the phrase which describes the new king 
as "designated by the choice of the nobles, and by 
the authority of the bishops consecrated king," we 
may catch a foreshadowing of the constitutional 
theory which Dunstan afterwards embodied in the 
crowning and coronation oath of Eadgar at Bath, 
as his attempt to find a general name for the royal 
dominions in the " Fourfold Realm " shows a fresh 
advance towards his final conception of a Kingdom 
of England.' 
^'■^^ Eadred's first year was a time of quiet. After the 

Hiring. ^_ J 

' At the death of ^thelstan, Northumbria stood apart with its 
own under-king, so that such a Witenagemot was impossible. 

^ Eadred, like his brother, commonly signs himself " Rex Anglo- 
rum," and styles himself " Rex Anglorum caeterarumque gentium 
in circuitu persistentium," etc. (Cod. Dip. 413, 11 56, 11 57, 11 59, 1161- 
1164), a phrase which the "fourfold realm " now enables us to de- 
fine. The "peoples surrounding" the English are strictly the 
" Britons," " Pagans," or Danes of Mid-Britain, and " Northum- 
brians." Among the variations we find " rex et primicerius totius 
Albionis " (Cod. Dip. 1168); and in a number of other charters 
" totius Albionis monarchus et primicerius " (ib. 425), " rex Albionis" 
(ib. 1 167). In 949 Eadred is he "quern Northymbra paganorumque 
seu caeterarum sceptro provinciarum Rex Regum omnipotens sub- 
limavit, quique praefatus Imperator semper Deo grates dignissimus 
larga manu subministrat " (Cod. Dip. 424). But another char- 
ter of the same year shows that this " Imperator" must be taken in 
a rhetorical rather than technical use : " Eadredus rex Anglorum, 
rectorque Nordhanymbra, et Paganorum imperator, Brittonumque 
propugnator " (Cod. Dip. 426), where we have the fourfold realm re- 
curring, and the " Empire " restricted to the Danes of Mid-Britain. 
In 995, however, the style became really Imperial, " Angul-Seaxna 
Eadred cyning et casere totius Britannise " (Cod. Dip. 433). 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



277 



peace with Eadmund, Olaf, Sihtric's son, so long chap. vr. 
the foe of the Enghsh kings, but now, apparently, wessex 
acting as their under -king, seems to have reigned Danelaw, 
beyond the Tees, while Ragnald, Gudferth's son, ggijT^gg 
ruled in our Yorkshire. The north submitted qui- — 
etly to Eadred's rule, while the Scots renewed the 
oath of " fellow-workmanship " which they had giv- 
en to his predecessor in exchange for the cession 
of Cumbria.' The country, however, soon became 
restless enough to call for the king's presence ; and 
in the following year, 947,' Eadred advanced to 
" Taddenescylf," and there received the oath of 
personal allegiance from the Northumbrian witan. 
Among them the chronicle makes no mention of 
any under-kings at all, and Wulfstan stands alone 
as the foremost man of the north. But formal as 
the recognition was, neither witan nor archbishop 
were long bound by it.' " Within a little while " 
(apparently before the year was out) " they belied 
it all, both pledge and oath."* They may have been 
tempted to a rising by the presence of the Danish 
king, Harald Blaatand, or Blue - Tooth, off their 
coast. The Danish kingdom, which had been built 
up by Gorm the Old, was now beginning to show, 
under his son Harald, the strength which was at 
last to bring about its conquest of England ; and 

' Eng. Chron. a. 946. ^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 947. 

^ Wulfstan, however, must have been at Eadred's court in 947, 
948, and 949, as he signs charters in all these years (Cod. Dip. 11 57, 
1 1 58, 1 1 59, 1 161, 1 162, 1 163, 424, 425, 426), so that he can hardly 
have taken any active part in this rising. 

* Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 947. This is the only chronicle that 
gives much information as to this reign : that of Winchester tells 
only Eadred's accession and death. 



278 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. the fleets of Harald rode triumphant alike in the 
wessex Baltic and the British Channel. Fortunately, how- 
Daneiaw. cver, f or Eadred, Harald's efforts in the latter quarter 
937^55 were mainly directed to the support of the Norman 
— Duchy, which was still hard pressed by its neigh- 
bors, and in which he hoped to find a base for 
a Danish conquest of Western Frankland. But, 
though bent on this aim, he still found room for 
wider projects ; he had already established one son 
as King of Semland in the Baltic, and if, after the 
completion of his work in Normandy, in 945, he 
turned to re-establishing the power of the Skioldungs 
in Britain, it would account for the reception of his 
son Eric by the Northumbrians at this juncture as 
their king.' 
Ericdriv- \^ fg possiblc that the sight of their English 

en out. ^ . . , , . 

ruler had roused fresh hopes of mdependence m 
the breasts of the Northumbrians. The house of 
yElfred was already showing signs of that physical 
exhaustion and degeneracy which- was to reveal 
itself in the premature manhood and equally pre- 
mature deaths of Eadwig and Eadgar, in the weak- 
ness of yEthelred, and the feeble frame of the child- 
less Confessor. Though Eadred was in the prime 
of life, he was suffering from a disease which in a 
few years hurried him to the tomb; and the Danish 
warriors may well have looked with scorn on a sick 
man's sword.' But no trace of weakness showed 

^ The later English chronicles confound this Eric Hirin.g v/ith the 
Norwegian, Eric Bloody-Axe. See, however, Adam of Bremen, ii. 
15: " Haraldus Hiring filium suum misit in Angliam, qui subacta 
insula a Northumbris tandem proditus et occisus est." 

^ See Saxon Biography of Dunstan ; Stubbs, Memor. S. Dunstan, 
P- 31- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 279 

itself in the king's action. As soon as winter was chap. vi. 
over he marched, in 948, on the north, and " ravaged wessex 
all Northumberland, for that they had taken Eric D^neiaw. 
for their king." ' The firing of the minster at Ripon, 93^^55 
where Wilfrid had lavished the resources of his art, — 
and which had escaped the ruin of the Danish storm, 
made this raid memorable in the annals of the north; 
the king's force was too overwhelming for resistance, 
and it was only as he withdrew to the south over 
the wrecked country that the Danes ventured to 
gather in pursuit. They fell on his rear at Chester- 
ford, and so heavy were the West-Saxon losses that 
Eadred in a burst of wrath threatened to turn back 
" and wholly ruin the land." But his threat was 
enough. The Danes abandoned Eric, made com- 
pensation to Eadred for the men who had fallen, 
and again submitted to his rule." 

In the rise and fall of Eric we mav perhaps see Arrest of 

Archbish- 

a strife, not only between the parties of resistance op Wuif- 
and of submission, but also between the Danish and 
Norwegian settlers who shared the Danelaw; for 
hardly had he been forsaken when, in 949, Olaf, 
Sihtric's son, reappeared in Northumbria, where he 
ruled for the next three years.' Olaf, no doubt, 
ruled as a sub-king under Eadred, for there is no 
record of further strife ; and the king must, through- 

' Eng. Chron. (Wore), 948. 

^ In 949 the Welsh, Danes, and Northumbrian jarls united for 
the last time in attesting a charter of Eadred. 

^ This is from a late Peterborough Chron. (E), a. 949, as our in- 
formation even from the Worcester Chronicle ceases here, save that 
it tells of Wulfstan's arrest in 952. Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 363) 
identifies this Olaf with Sihtric's son; Earle (Paral. Chron, 118, 
note) makes him another Olaf. 



28o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, vr. out these years, have been quietly getting a firmer 

wessex grip on the Danelaw. In 952, indeed, he ventured 

Danelaw, on an act which marked him as its master. The 

937^55 submission after Chesterford had no doubt won 

— ' pardon for Wulfstan's share in the revolt that so 

soon followed his oath -taking at Taddenescylf, as 

for the share of his fellow-rebels; but to the English 

court, where the young king and his ministers were 

alike swayed by a religious revival, the forswearing 

of an archbishop took a different color from that of 

a Dane, nor had the primate's course during the 

years that followed been free from charges of fresh 

disloyalty." He " had been often accused to the 

king," but it was not till 952 that he was seized, 

and brought as a prisoner before Eadred in the 

fortress of Jedburgh.' 

TheNorth- f he arrcst of the archbishop was due, no doubt, 

timbrian . , . ... 

earldom, to suspicious of his compHcity in a fresh rising in 
Northumbria, where Olaf was in the same year driven 
out by his subjects, and Eric Hiring again received 
as their king.' Of the strife that followed through 
the next two years we know only the close, the re- 
newed expulsion of Eric, and the fresh submission 
of the Danelaw to Eadred.* But short and unevent- 

* As we have seen, Wulfstan's presence at Eadred's court in 947 
and 948 is hardly compatible with any active sharing in the rising 
of the north during these years. He is there still in 949 (Cod. Dip. 
424, 425, 426, 427), but I do not see his name afterwards. 

"^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 952. He was released two years after, 
on the death of Eric (ib. 954). 

° This is again from the late Peterborough Chronicle, and may 
possibly be a mere blunder for Eric's reception in 949, as given in 
the Worcester Chronicle (D). which knows nothing of these later 
events. 

* The account in the Chronicle differs widely here from that of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 28 1 

ful as the struggle was, it was the last ; for with the chap. vi. 
submission of 954 the long work of y^lfred's house wessex 
was done. Dogged as his fight had been, the Dane Daneiaw. 
at last owned himself beaten ; from the moment of 93^55 
Eadred's final triumph all resistance came to an — 
end; and the close of the under-kingdom proclaim- 
ed that the north was brought into the general or- 
ganization of the English realm. The poHcy of the 
great ealdormanries, however, triumphed again over 
that of national union. Though Eadred, in 954, 
"took," like ^thelstan, "to the kingdom of the 
Northumbrians," ' he made no attempt to restore 
the direct rule of ^^thelstan's early years. He con- 
tented himself with reducing the under-kingdom to 
an earldom, and governing it through an English- 
man instead of a Dane. Oswulf, who had till now 
held a semi-independent position as " high-reeve " of 
Bernicia, was set over both Bernicia and Deira as 
earl of the Northumbrians. 

Dunstan seems to have accompanied the l^mcr r/i^ Sc/iooi 

1 • r • 1 • • "^ Glaston- 

mto Northumbria after its subjugation, at least as imy. 
far as Chester-le-Street, where he saw the remains 
of St. Cuthbert still resting in the temporary refuge 
which they had found after their removal from Lin- 
disfarne ; "" and it was probably under his counsel 
that Eadred resolved to put an end to the subject 
royalty of the north and to set up the new earldom 
of the Northumbrians. The abbot's post probably 

the later Saga of Hakon the Good (Laing, Sea Kings, i. 318), which 
takes this Eric for a son of Harald Fair-hair, who enters Northum- ■ 
bria for plunder, encounters a king named Olaf, " whom King Ead- 
mund had set to defend the land," and falls in battle against fearful 
odds. ' Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 954, 

"^ Stubbs, Memor. S. Dunstan, p. 379. 



282 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. vr. answered in some way to that of the later chan- 
wessex cellor ; ' and as we find the hoard in his charge at 
Danelaw, ^he end of the reign,' he must then have combined 
937^55 with this the ofHce of the later treasurer. Of the 
— details of his political work, however, during this 
period nothing is told us. But of the intellectual 
and literary work which he was carrying on through- 
out the reign we are allowed to see a little more. 
It was, in fact, in these nine years that the more 
important part of his educational work was done. 
If much of his time was necessarily spent at Win- 
chester, or with the royal court, the bulk of it seems 
still to have been given to his Abbey of Glaston- 
bury, and to the school which was growing up 
within its walls. He himself led the way in the 
work of teaching. Tradition told of the kindliness 
with which he won the love of his scholars,' the 
psalms sung with them as they journeyed together, 
the vision that comforted Dunstan for the loss of 
one little scholar as he saw the child borne heav- 
enward in the arms of angels. In the library of 
Glastonbury some interesting memorials of his scho- 



' In 949, at the close of a grant to Reculver, we find " Ego Dun- 
stan indignus abbas rege Eadredo imperante hanc domino meo 
hereditariam Cartulam dictitando composui, et propriis digitorum 
articulis perscripsi" (Cod. Dip. 425). 

^ Stubbs, Memor. S. Dunstan, Introd. pp. Ixxxvi. Ixxxvii. 

^ It is an amusing contrast to the common portraiture of Dun- 
stan, that at his own Canterbury, a hundred years after his death, he 
was regarded as the patron and protector of school-boys. Once, in 
Anselm's time, when the yearly whipping-day arrived for the Cathe- 
dral school, the poor little wretches crowded weeping to his shrine 
and sought aid from their " dear father Dunstan." Dunstan it was, 
so every school-boy believed, who sent the masters to sleep, and 
then set them quarrelling till the whipping blew over. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



283 



lastic work were preserved even to the time of the chap, vi. 
Reformation : books on the Apocalypse, a collection wessex 
of canons drawn from his Irish teachers, passages Danelaw, 
transcribed from Frank and Roman law-books, notes 93^55. 
on measure and numbers, a pamphlet on grammar, "~^ 
a mass of biblical quotations, tables for calculating 
Easter, and a book of Ovid's Art of Love which 
jostled oddly with an English homily on the Inven- 
tion of the Cross." 

From its remote site in the west, Glastonbury J(^'"^- 

-' Jluence on 

threw off an offshoot into Central Britain. In 955 English 
yEthelwold, Dunstan's chief scholar and assistant 
in his educational work, received from Eadred a gift 
of the Abbey of Abingdon, "" a house which we noted 
as growing up in the eighth century by the side of 
the Thames, and which had since been ruined by 
the incursions of the Danes. Settling there with a 
few clerks from Glastonbury,' the new abbot soon 
' gathered a school whose activity more than rival- 



' Memor. S. Dunstan, Introd. pp. cx.-cxii. " Several of these 
pieces," says Prof. Stubbs, "contain British glosses, and furnish 
some of the earliest specimens of Welsh." 

^ Chron. Abingd. (ed. Stevenson), i. 124. ^thelwold "disposu- 
it ultra -marinas partes adire, causa se imbuendi seu sacris libris 
seu monasticis disciplinis perfectius : sed praevenit venerabilis re- 
gina Eadgifu, mater regis Eadredi, ejus conamina, dans consilium 
regi ne talem virum sineret egredi de regno suo. Placuit tunc regi 
Eadredo, suadente matre sua, dare venerabili Athelwoldo quendam 
locum, vocabulo Abbandun." — Vit. ^thelwoldi, Chron. Abingd. 
(ed. Stevenson), ii. 257. Did the writ "ne exeas regno" already 
exist } 

^ " Quem statim secuti sunt quidam clerici de Glastonia, hoc est 
Osgarus, Foldbirchtus, Frithegarus, et Ordbirchtus de Wintonia, et 
Eadricus de Lundonia." — Vit. Ethelwoldi, Chron. Abingd. (ed. Ste- 
venson), ii. 258, an interesting passage, as showing from how wide 
a range Glastonbury had drawn. 



284 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vi. led that of the house from which it sprang. From 
wessex these two centres the movement spread through 
Danelaw. Wesscx and Mercia. In both the impulse given by 
937^55. ^J^fred had been checked, but not arrested, by the 
stress of war. So large a part of the mass of our 
early literature has been lost that we can hardly 
draw any conclusion from the " scarcity of its re- 
mains in the period which followed the king's death ; 
indeed the larger and more literary tone of the Eng- 
lish Chronicle through the reign of Eadward the 
Elder is a sufficient proof that the earlier intellect- 
ual movement had still its representatives through 
the first years of the struggle with the Danelaw.' 
Even when in yEthelstan's day the Chronicle sinks 
into meagre annals, a fortunate chance reveals to us, 
in the battle-songs and death-songs embedded in its 
pages, the existence of a mass of English verse of 
which all memory would otherwise have perished. 
Side by side, too, with this statelier song we catch 
glimpses of a wilder and more romantic upgrowth 
of popular verse, which wrapped in an atmosphere 
of romance the lives of kings such as ^thelstan 
and Eadgar.' 

Dunstan's own youth, indeed, his zeal for letters, 

^ See the mention by William of Malmesbury of a book written in 
^thelstan's time. Gest. Reg. (ed. Hardy), i. 209.— (A. S. G.) 

° Malmesbury has preserved for us in his Gesta Regum prose ver- 
sions of some of these ballads. The ballads of ^thelstan are : (i) 
The Birth of the King; (2) The Drowning of Eadwine ; (3) The 
Craft of Anlaf. There are besides three ballads of Eadgar : (i) 
The Slave Queen ; (2) Eadgar and ^Ifthryth ; (3) Eadgar and the 
Scot-King. How vigorous this ballad literature was we see from 
the preservation of these down to the twelfth century, when they 
were introduced by the writers of the time into our history, much to 
its confusion. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 285 

and the fact that he found books and teachers to chap. vi. 
meet his zeal, show that the impulse which ^^ If red wessex 
had given was far from having spent its force in his Danelaw, 
grandson's days. But there can be no doubt that gs^^gg 
the foundation of the two schools at Glastonbury — 
and Abingdon gave to this impulse a new strength 
and guidance. It is from them that we must date 
the rise of the second old English literature, a liter- 
ature which bears the stamp of Wessex, as the first 
had borne the stamp of Northumbria. In poetry 
this literature was no doubt inferior to its pred- 
ecessor; there was nothing to rival the verse of 
Cadmon or the poems of Cynewulf. But the later 
time may justly claim as its own the creation of a 
stately historic verse, of which fragments remain in 
the battle-songs of Brunanburh and Maldon, or the 
death-songs of Eadgar or Eadward. The love of 
poetry was seen even in the series of translations to 
which we really owe our knowledge of the earlier 
Northumbrian song. Save for a few lines embedded 
in Baeda or graven on the Rothewell cross, this 
mass of song in its Northumbrian dress has wholly 
vanished. What we learn of Cadmon or the lyrics 
we have only in the West -Saxon garb which was 
given them at this period, and which witnesses to 
a new thirst for poetry in the south. But the bulk 
of the work done in this later time was a work of 
prose; and like that of Alfred, from which it started, 
of popular prose. Disappointed as we may be, in a 
literary sense, when we front its mass of homihes 
and scriptural versions and saints' lives and gram- 
mar and lesson -books, they tell us of a clergy 
quickened to a new desire for knowledge, and of 



286 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. a like quickening of educational zeal among the 

wessex people at large. 

Danelaw. But whatever was the result of Dunstan's literary 

937^55 work, it was interrupted by Eadred's death. The 
— vouns: kins: was at the heio;ht of his renown. The 
death, real weakness of the royal power had yet to disclose 
itself, and the presence of great earls or ealdormen 
, at Eadred's court only seemed to add to its lustre. 
The land had at last won peace. The jarls of the 
north, Urm and Grim, and Gunnar and Scule, sat 
quietly in the witenagemot as they had sat in the 
witenagemots of ^^thelstan. There, too, sat as 
quietly the princes of Wales, Morecant and Owen.' 
Such a mastery of Britain raised yet higher the 
pretensions of the crown. The reorganization of 
the Roman Empire at this juncture by Otto the 
Great, and the claim of supremacy which the em- 
peror put forth over the countries of the west, 
may have given a fresh impulse to the assumption 
of titles which not only expressed the new might 
of the royal power, but indicated that the English 
king held him.self to be fellow and not subject 
to the German." It is, at any rate, in Eadred's 
last year of rule that we find the first clear in- 
stance of the use of a strictly imperial style in 
the titles of our king, for Eadred not only styled 



^ Cod. Dip. 426, 433. When Eadred visits Abingdon, " contingit 
adesse sibi non paucos venientes gentis Northanhymbrorum," who 
got drunk over the feast, " inebriatis Northumbris statim ac vesperi 
recedentibus."— Vit. Ethelwoldi, Chron. Abingd. (ed. Stevenson), ii. 
258. 

= In 949 there were envoys of Eadred at Otto's court at Aachen. 
— Lappenberg, Hist. Anglo-Sax. ii. 156. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



287 



himself King of the Anglo-Saxons but " Csesar of chap. vi. 
the whole of Britain." ' What exact force lay in wessex 
these pompous titles, the English Chancery, if we D^ieiaw. 
may use the term of a later time, would possibly have 93^55 
found it hard to explain ; vague, however, as they — 
were, they no doubt expressed in some sort a claim 
to political supremacy over the whole British island 
as complete as that which Otto claimed over the 
western world. But while his clerks were framing 
these lofty phrases, the king's life was drawing to a 
close. Throughout his reign Eadred had fought 
against sickness and weakness of body as nobly as 
he had fought against the Dane,' and now that his 
work was done, the over-wrought frame gave way. 
Dunstan was at Glastonbury, where the royal Hoard 
was then in keeping, when news came in November, 
955, that the king lay death-smitten at Frome.' The 
guardians of the Hoard were bidden to bring their 
treasures that Eadred might see them ere he died ; 
but while the heavy wains were still toiling along the 
Somersetshire lanes,' the death - howl of the women 
about the court told the abbot as he hurried onward 
that the friend he loved was dead." He found the 
corpse already forsaken, for the thegns of the court 
had hurried to the presence of the new king; and 
Dunstan was left alone to carry Eadred to his grave 
beside Eadmund at Glastonbury. 

' Cod. Dip. 433. 

"^ Sax. biogr., Memor. S. Dunstan (Stubbs), p. 31. 

' Ibid. 

* Eadred's death is dated Nov. 23, 955, Eng. Chron. ad ann. 

^ Vit. Adelardi, Memor. S. Dunstan (Stubbs), p. 58. 



288 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VI. Note. — The two following chapters cannot be considered as ex- 

— pressing Mr. Green's final view of the political state of England, 

j^tt^ and of the relations of the ealdormen to the Crown, in the tenth 
and tne 
Danelaw, century. His work on this period was cut short in the autumn oi 

— ■ 1882 by illness and the necessity for leaving England, and these 
937-955. ^^yQ chapters were hurriedly sketched out, and then laid aside for 
future reconsideration. In now printing them I wish to state clearly 
that they are unfinished work which had yet to receive the final ex- 
amination and judgment of the writer. The materials for Chapter 
Vn. in particular had not been put into any order, and the present 
arrangement of the subjects is my own. — (A. S. G.) 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GREAT EALDORMEN. 
955-988. 

The true significance of English history during Political 
the years that followed the triumph of the house of of 
y^lfred over the Danelaw lies in its internal political ^"S^'^"^- 
development. Foreign affairs are for the time of 
little import, weighty as their influence had been 
before, and was again to be. With Eadred's victory 
the struggle with the Danes seemed to have reached 
its close. Stray pirate boats still hung off headland 
and coast ; stray wikings still shoved out in spring 
tide to gather booty. But for nearly half a century 
to come no pirate fleet landed on the shores of 
Britain. The storm against which she had battled 
seemed to have drifted away, and the land passed 
from the long conflict into a season of external 
peace. It is in the social and political changes that 
were passing over the country during this period, 
and the conflicting tendencies which were at work 
in producing these changes, that we must seek for 
its real history. Here, as elsewhere, the upgrowth 
of a feudal aristocracy was going on side by side 
with a vast development in the power, and still 
more in the pretensions, of the crown. The same 
movement which in other lands was breaking up 
every nation into a mass of loosely knit states, with 

19 



290 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ' 

cHAP^vn. nobles at their head who owned little save a nominal 
The allegiance to their king, threatened to break up 
dormen. ' England itself. What hindered its triumph was 
955^88. ^^^ power of the crown, and it is the story of the 
struggle of the monarchy with these tendencies to 
provincial isolation which fills the period between 
the conquest of the Danelaw and the conquest of 
England itself by the Norman. It was a struggle 
which England shared with the rest of the western 
world, but its issue here was a peculiar one. In 
other countries feudalism won an easy victory over 
the central government. In England alone the 
monarchy was strong enough to hold it at bay. But 
if feudalism proved too weak to conquer the mon- 
archy, it was strong enough to paralyze its action. 
Neither of the two forces could master, but each 
could weaken the other, and the conflict of the two 
could disintegrate England as a whole. From the 
moment when their rivalry broke into actual strife 
the country lay a prey to disorder wdthin and to in- 
sult from without. 
^^'^ , The upgrowth of the kindy power had been 
brought about, as we have seen, by a number of 
varied influences. It had drawn new strength from 
the dying-out of the other royal stocks, leaving the 
house of Cerdic alone, and from the high character 
of the kings of Alfred's line. A long series of vic- 
tories, the constant sight and recognition of the king 
as head of the national host, and the religious char- 
acter with which the leadership in war against a 
heathen foe invested him, had added to the royal 
dignity; and new claims to authority had sprung 
from the gradual upbuilding of England, and the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 29 1 

extent of dominion brought under the king's rule, chap.vh. 
from the balance of Danish and anti-Danish parties The 
in the realm, and from the king's position as com- dormen." 
mon political centre of the English provinces, gg^gs 
Along with the advance thus brought about in the — 
authority of the crown, there went on a change in 
the old Teutonic conception of kingship, and an 
imitation of imperial claims aided by intercourse with 
the imperial court. The solemn coronation of the 
king, the oath of fidelity, the identification of loyalty 
with personal troth to the personal king, the doctrine 
of treason, the haughty claims to a far-reaching 
supremacy, the vaunting titles assumed in charters, 
all point to a new conception of royalty. But the 
royal claims lay still far ahead of the real strength 
of the crown. There was a want of administrative 
machinery in actual connection with the govern- 
ment, responsible to it, drawing its force directly 
from it, and working automatically in its name even 
in mom-ents when the royal power was itself weak 
or wavering. The king's power was still a personal 
power. He had to be everywhere and to see for 
himself that everything he willed was done. Rest- 
ing on feeling, on tradition, on personal character, 
the crown was strong^ under a kinsf who was strong 
whose personal action was felt everywhere through- 
out the realm, whose dread lay on every reeve and 
ealdorman. But with a weak king the crown was 
weak. Ealdormen, provincial Witenagemots, local 
jurisdictions, ceased to move at the royal bidding 
the moment direct pressure was loosened or re- 
moved. Enfeebled as they were, the old provincial 
jealousies, the old tendency to severance and isola- 



292 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. tion lingered on, and woke afresh when the crown 

The fell to a nerveless ruler or to a child, 
dormen^' ^^ the moment we have reached, the royal power 
gg~gg and the national union it embodied had to battle 
■ — , with the impulse given to these tendencies towards 

XJie Eal- .... 

dormen. national disintegration by the struggle with the 
Northman. We have seen how the spirit of feudal- 
ism was aided and furthered by the Danish wars, 
by the growth of commendation and the decrease of 
free allodial owners, and by the importance given to 
the military temper. In the ealdormen themselves 
the feudal spirit was strengthened by the memories 
of provincial independence, and by the continued 
existence of what had once been older kingdoms 
and diverse peoples, as well as by the retention of 
their popular life in the survival of their old judicial 
and administrative forms. Popular feeling and 
" feudal tendencies went, in fact, hand in hand. The 
new ealdormen created by the later West-Saxon 
kings had hardly taken their place as mere lieuten- 
ants of the national sovereign before they again be- 
gan to rise into petty kings, and in the century 
which follows we see Mercian or Northumbrian 
thegns following a Mercian or Northumbrian eal- 
dorman to the field, though it were against the lord 
of the land. Even the constitutional forms which 
sprang from the old English freedom tended to in- 
vest these higher nobles with a commanding power. 
In the " great meeting " of the Witenagemot, or 
Assembly of the Wise, lay the rule of the realm, but 
distance and the hardships of travel made the pres- 
ence of the lesser thegns as rare as that of the free- 
men; and the ealdormen became of increasing im- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



293 



955-988. 



portance in the national council. The old English chap.vh. 
democracy had thus all but passed into an oligarchy The 
of the narrowest kind. But powerful as they might domeiL " 
be, the English ealdormen never succeeded in be- 
coming really hereditary or independent of the 
crown. Kings as weak as ^thelred could drive 
them into exile and replace them by fresh nominees. 
If the Witenagemot enabled the great nobles to 
bring their power to bear directly on the crown, it 
preserved, at any rate, a feeling of national unity, 
and was ready to back the crown against individual 
revolt. The Church, too, never became feudalized. 
The bishop clung to the crown, and the bishop re- 
mained a great social and political power. As local 
in area as the ealdorman, for the province was his 
diocese and he sat by the side of the ealdorman in 
the local Witenagemot, he furnished a standing 
check on the independence of the great nobles. 

The death of Eadred formed the occasion for an ^"^«'4^< 
immediate outbreak of political strife. The flight 
of the thegns from his death-bed was the sign of a 
court revolution. Eadred had died childless, but 
his brother Eadmund had left two children, Eadwig' 
and Eadgar, and the eldest of these was now called 
to the throne.' Mere boy of fifteen as he was," we 
find the new king the centre of an opposition party, 
hostile to the system of Eadred's reign.' In its out- 

^ As he mounted the throne in November, 955, and died in Octo- 
ber, 958, Eadwig's reign covers hardly three years. 

^ Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. Ixxxviii. 

^ Ibid. Robertson (Hist. Essays, p. 191) conjectures from Dunstan's 
connection with the East-Anghan house and Eadgifu, as from the 
combination of "his own disciples" against him at this time, that 
" he had allied himself with the party in the state opposed to the 



294 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. set the struggle seems to have been one for influ- 
The ence between the kindred of the king, the leading 
dormen. ' nobles of Wessex/ and the three who had directed 
955^88. ^ff^ii's in Eadred's name — his mother Eadgifu, the 
great ealdorman of East Anglia, and Abbot Dun- 
stan of Glastonbury. In this struggle the first party 
proved successful. The charters of the time show 
that the king's kinsmen, ^Ifhere, yElfheah, and 
yEthelmser, stand at this time first among his coun- 
sellors," while Eadgifu was driven from court, as well 
as bereft of her property.' The half-king, Ealdor- 
man yEthelstan, however, and Dunstan* held their 
ground ' at court for a while, in spite of the efforts 
of y^thelgifu, a woman of high lineage, whose in- 
fluence over Eadwig had played no slight part in 
the change of counsellors. Darker tales floated 
about of i^thelgifu's purpose to wed the boy-king 

leading nobility of Wessex, who were. the principal characters round 
the throne during the reigns of ^thelstan and Eadmund." 

* The Saxon biographer says that most of Eadmund's nobles 
"lapsed from the path of rectitude" — that is, opposed Dunstan and 
his fellow-rulers. 

'^ The second charter of Eadwig is a grant to ^Ifhere as his " kins- 
man," descended "a carissimis predecessoribus." — Cod. Dip. 437. 
This was the Mercian ealdorman of later days. The assertion of 
the twelfth-century biographers of Dunstan that Eadwig banished 
his kinsmen from court " is contradicted by every grant and charter 
of his reign." — Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. 193. 

^ She says herself, " Eadred died, and Eadgifu was bereft of all her 
property." — Cod. Dip. 499. 

* Osbern (sec. 25) accuses Eadwig of from the first changing his 
counsellors, " despectis majoribus natu, puerorum consilia sectaba- 
tur," of pillaging rich people and churches, and of plundering and 
outraging the queen-mother, Eadgifu. Osbern also says that Dun- 
stan, by threats and exhortations, opposed all this and the marriage ; 
but, finding his efforts vain, withdrew. 

^ Dunstan signs charters till the coronation : ^thelstan still signs 
at the head of the ealdormen to the close of the year. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 295 

to her daughter, a marriage which from their kin- chap. vn. 
ship in blood the religious opinion of the day re- The 
garded as incestuous ; and when the Witan gathered ^domS^ 
to crown Eadwig, the jealousy of the two parties, gg^gg 
as well as the irritation which her influence caused, — 
was seen in a strife at the coronation feast/ 

To realize the import of this strife, we must recall "^J'^ 
the sacred associations that hung round the crown- parties. 
ing of a king." It was in itself a solemn office of 
the Church. It was the primate of the whole Eng- 
lish people who called on the people for their " yea " 
or " nay." The king's vow to govern rightly was 
given before the altar. He was anointed with holy 
oil. The crown was set on his head by priestly 
hands. The prayers of the multitude went up for 
him to heaven as he was " hallowed to kine." With 
the new sacredness about him, still crowned with 
the royal crown, still clad in the royal robes that 
bishops and priests had put upon him, his hair still 
dripping with the holy oil, the new ruler passed from 
church to guest -hall, and sat for the first time 
amidst Witan and people gathered in solemn feast 
before him as their consecrated head. But the 
sense of his hallowing fell lightly on Eadwig. 
Withdrawing on slight pretext from the coronation 
feast, he delayed his return, till whispers ran through 
the hall that he had retired to his own chamber and 
the society of yEthelgifu." The slight stung nobles 
and bishops to the quick ; and though Archbishop 

^ The coronation feast took place on the first or second Sunday af- 
ter the Epiphany, 956. — Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. Ixxxviii. 

" Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 170) gives the history of our coronations. 

^ Will. Malm., Vit. Dunst., sec. 26, " Ille quasi ventris desiderio pul- 
satus, primo in secretum, mox in triclinium fceminarum concessit." 



296 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.vir. Odo stilled the uproar, the Witan bade Dunstan 
The and Bishop Kynesige of Lichfield bring back the 
dormen. ' king, willing or unwilling.' The envoys found Ead- 
955^88. ^'^S between y^thelgifu and her daughter, the crown 
flung heedlessly at his feet. Hot words passed ; 
and as the boy refused to rise, Dunstan carried out 
the bidding of the Witan by dragging him with his 
own hand to the guest-hall, and setting him in his 
kingly seat." The deed was one not likely to be 
forgiven, either by Eadwig or by ^thelgifu, whom 
the abbot in his wrath at her resistance had threat- 
ened with death; and as the year went on he felt 
the weight of her hand. Dunstan was driven from 
the realm by a sentence of outlawry; and men 
charged to tear out his eyes reached the shore as he 
put out to sea and steered for the coast of Flanders,^ 
where Arnulf gave him shelter in the great abbey, 
just restored by the count's munificence, beside 
which the town of Ghent was growing up. 

^ " Volentem vel nolentem." — Sax. Biog. sec. 21. 

^ Such seems the simple story of an event on which "much has 
been written, and an amount of criticism spent altogether out of 
proportion to the materials for its history." — Stubbs, Memor. St. 
Dunst., Introd. p. Ixxxix. The account given by our earliest author- 
ity, the Saxon biographer, and of which all later stories are but ex- 
aggerations, attributes, indeed, the whole outbreak to a monstrous 
lust of Eadwig for both ^thelgifu and her daughter. We may dis- 
miss this the more easily that its narrator clearly forgets that Ead- 
wig was a mere boy, that the daughter became Eadwig's queen not 
a year later, and that what remains, after dismissing this scandal, is 
quite enough to account for the event. His story, it must be re- 
membered, was written forty years after the occurrence, and here is 
clearly not derived from Dunstan himself. 

^ Sax. Biog. sec. 23. The importance of his withdrawal to Ghent 
is well shown by Stubbs (Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. cxx.). The 
Saxon biographer calls it " ignotam jam regionem dictu Galliee, cu- 
jus poene loquelam ritumque ignorabat." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 297 

The triumph of the rival party was completed at chap.vii. 
the close of the year by the withdrawal to a monas- The 
tery of the "half- king," ^thelstan, whose ealdor- domen. " 
manry seems for a tim.e to have been parted between gg^gg 
his four sons. But the price of this triumph had to _,~t, 

1 • 1 • T • • r 1 1 T-. The Mer- 

lin paid in a new disintegration of the realm. Be- daneai- 

fore the end of the same year, 956, the leader of the "^'""'"'y' 
king's kin, yElfhere, was made ealdorman of the 
Mercians. The revival of the Mercian ealdormanry 
was a far more significant step than the creation of 
the ealdormanries that had preceded it; for while 
they had been but divisions of the Danelaw, this 
was a parting of that purely English kingdom of the 
" Angul-Saxons " which Eadward had formed by the 
union of Wessex and of Mercia, and which had served 
ever since as the nucleus of the growing realm.' And 
not only was this inner and purely English kingdom 
broken up, but it was broken into two nearly equal 
parts. In extent, in population, in wealth, the Mer- 
cian ealdormanry, stretching as it did from Bristol to 
Manchester and from the Watling Street to Offa's 
Dyke,'' was little inferior to the region south of 
Thames which was left to the king. The court rev- 
olution, in fact, had ended in prisoning Eadwig with- 
in the limits of a dominion which was hardly larger 
than the dominion of any one of his own ealdormen,' 

' Amidst all the changes of the royal style, the one phrase which 
the Chancery always falls back upon, as really descriptive of the 
character of the realm which the House of -Alfred had built up, is 
" King of the Angul-Saxons, and of the peoples that lie about them." 

'•^ It was, in the main, coextensive with the Mercia of .^thelred and 
^thelfised, save in the valley of the Thames, which may have passed 
to the East-Saxon ealdormanry. 

^ As to the order of events in 956, we gain no information from 
chronicle or biographers. The charters, however, give a few hints 



298 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



Great Eal 
dormen. 

955-988. 



cHAP^vii. and in leaving him at the mercy of the four great 
The houses who parted all the rest of Britain between 
them. 

How helpless the crown had become in face of 
these great houses was shown by the events that 
followed. The two court parties who had tri- 
umphed over Dunstan and yEthelstan quarrelled 
over their victory. They had won the king, but 
their joint possession was disturbed when yEthel- 
gifu, in 957, wedded her daughter yElfgifu' to Ead- 
wig, and the jealousy of the king's kin was shown 
by their withdrawal from the king's court, aa well as 
by their persuading his younger brother, Eadgar, to 
join in this withdrawal.' For a while Archbishop 

which I have used in the text, (i) That for some months of the 
year Dunstan and ^thelstan remained counsellors at court is shown 
by their joint signatures to several charters {e.g. Cod. Dip. 1191,1 196, 
1 197), in which ^thelstan still signs first among the "duces," while 
^Ifhere still signs as "comes" or "minister." (2) In a smaller 
group Dunstan's name is no longer found ; but ^thelstan still signs 
at the head of the "duces," and ^Ifhere remains "minister" {e.g. 
Cod. Dip. 1 198). (3) In a third, ^thelstan still signs first, but ^If- 
here signs as " dux," no doubt as Ealdorman of Mercia {e.g. Cod. Dip. 
1 179, 1 181, 1 182, 1 183, 1 184, 1 185, 1 186, 1 187, 1 188, 1 189, 1 190, 1 192, 
1 193, 1 194, 1 199, etc.). (4) yEthelstan disappears, and ^Ifhere signs 
as head of the "duces" {e.g. Cod. Dip. 1207). (There is a second 
and inferior "^thelstan dux," whose signature has gone on side by 
side with the first, and who signs on into the next year ; but he is 
clearly distinguishable from the East -Anglian ealdorman by the 
position of his signature.) As the last charters are few, we may 
suppose that ^thelstan only withdrew from court towards the end 
of the year. 

' Cod. Dip. 1 201. An exchange of lands is witnessed by "^Ifgifu, 
the king's wife, and .^thelgifu, the king's wife's mother," besides 
three bishops and one ealdorman, Byrhtnoth. 

^ The charters show that Eadgar remained with his brother up to 
May, 957 (Cod. Dip. 465). We are, however, far less aided by these 
documents than in 956, when their number is very large — perhaps 
from the abundance of coronation grants. In 957 we have but few, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



299 



Odo remained at court, though denouncing the mar- chap.vii. 
riage as against Church law; but before the year The 
ended the disregard of his remonstrances f orced ^dora^^ " 
him also to retire, and his solemn sentence " parted gg^gs 
King Eadwig and ^Ifgifu, for that they were of — 
kin." ' The sentence was at once followed by a 
general revolt. The new ealdorman whom Eadwig 
had set over Mid - Britain was the first to move 
against him ; for it could but have been at ^Ifhere's 
bidding that the Mercians rose and chose Eadgar 
for their king.'' The ealdormanries of the eastern 

and there is little to show to what part of the year they belong. In 
one group we find Eadgar and the full court as at the close of 956 
(Cod. Dip. 463, 465, May 9) ; in another, though Archbishop Odo and 
the bishops remain, Eadgar and ^Ifhere are both missing {e.g. Cod. 
Dip. 467, 468, where but two " duces " sign, Eadmund and ^thelsige) ; 
in a third, Odo is added to the number of absentees, there are few 
bishops, while to the duces, Eadmund and ^thelsige, are added 
.Alfred, ^Ifric, and ^Ifsige (Cod. Dip. 1209, 12 10). 

' Eng. Chron. a. 958. Of this separation the Saxon biographer 
and Adelard say nothing, while Osbern gives another tale. 

^ As we have seen, the revolt cannot have been earlier than May, 
and as Odo remained after Eadgar's withdrawal, probably not ear- 
lier than the later months of the year. On the other hand, it " can- 
not be later than the spring of 958, as in that year Eadgar begins to 
issue charters as king." — Stubbs, Memor. St.Dunst.,Introd. pp. Ixxxix., 
xc). The assertion of Dunstan's biographers that it arose out of 
Eadwig's attacks on monks, is a confusion of this struggle with the 
struggle after Eadgar's death. Robertson (Historical Essays, p. 193) 
says, justly enough, " Eadwig is accused of dissolving the monaster- 
ies of Glastonbury and Abingdon, and of banishing the Benedictines 
from England ; yet he was the earliest benefactor of Abingdon, for 
his grants of Ginge and other lands, in 956, are realities, while the 
charter of Eadred, dated in 955 and witnessed by Oscytel, as Arch- 
bishop of York, is a forgery. ^Ethelwold, ' father of the monks,' 
with .^Ifric of Malmesbury and two other abbots, attest his latest 
charter in 959 ; the clergy as well as the laity of Wessex were his 
stanchest supporters — .^Ifwold, recommended for the see of Cre- 
diton by Dunstan, Daniel, and Brithelm of Wells, among the bishops 
of his party, are claimed by Malmesbury as ahwim of Glastonbury — 



955-988. 



300 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. coast, however, with the Five Boroughs and the 
The Northumbrian earldom, must have joined -^Ifhere 

dormen^ii^ his revolt, for the whole land north of the Thames 
soon owned the rule of Eadgar, and only Wessex 
remained faithful to Eadwig.' On the young king's 
part no resistance seems to have been possible ; a 

and there were no Benedictines at that time in England to drive 
away. The struggle between secular and regular began in the reign 
of Eadgar, and was antedated long afterwards to throw odium on 
Edwy. If Dunstan was among the supporters of Eadgar, Edwy 
could point to .^thelwold as his follower ; for the contest was 
fought on political grounds, and not about a question of ecclesias- 
tical discipline." 

* Will. Malmesbury (Vit. Dunst. lib. ii. sec. 3) says the West Sax- 
ons rose too, but reconciled themselves to Eadwig, perhaps on his 
abandonment of his wife. Of the northern rising our knowledge is 
small. It is mentioned in only one chronicle, and then under a 
wrong year. The Saxon biographer of Dunstan calls it vaguely a 
rising of the " northern people " (" a Brumali populo relinqueretur ;" 
so Eadgar is chosen king of the " Brumales "), but gives no definition 
of them. With Osbern, who is the first to give a detailed account 
of this revolution, it was strictly a rising of the Mercians, " virorum 
ab Humbre fiuvio usque ad Tamesium " (sec. 28). Eadwig, he says, 
was in Mercia when the sudden rising took place. " Coacti in tur- 
bam regem cum adultera fugitantem atque in inviis sese occultan- 
tem armis persequi non desistunt. Et ipsam quidem juxta Clau- 
diam civitatem repertam subnervavere deinde qua morte digna 
fuerat mulctavere. Porro regem per diversa locorum semestra devi- 
antem ultra fiumen Tamisium compulere " (ibid.). Eadgar is then 
chosen king " super omnes provincias ab Humbre usque ad Tamisi- 
um," and war follows for a while. In all this Eadmer follows Osbern. 
The signatures, however, of Archbishop Oscytel and of many north- 
ern jarls to Eadgar's charter of 959 (Cod. Dip. 480), when Eadgar is 
"totius Merciae provincise necnon et aliorum gentium in circuitu 
persistentium gubernator et rector," and which is attested by Dun- 
stan of London and other Mercian bishops, show Northumbria and 
East Anglia as taking equal part with Mercia in the revolt. .,^lf- 
here signs first among the ealdormen, followed by -.^thelstan and 
yEthelwold of East Anglia. Of northern names we see " Oskytel 
dux," and Sigwulf, Ulfkytel, Rold, Dragmel, Thurferth, and Thurcy- 
tel, among the "ministri." 



955-988. 

Its end. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^OI 

joint meeting of the Mercian and West-Saxon Wite- chap.vh. 
nagemots agreed on the division of the realm, and The 
the Thames was fixed as the boundary between the^Jomen^ 
dominions of the two brothers.' • 

The importance of the revolution lay in its reve- 
lation of the weakness of the monarchy. At its first 
clash with the forces it had itself built up the realm 
of Eadward and y^thelstan shrank helplessly into its 
original Wessex. The Danelaw with English Mer- 
cia again fronted the West -Saxon king, as it had 
fronted him when Guthrum marched to complete 
the work of the Northmen by the reduction of 
southern Britain ; and it was now organized into a 
single political body, owning the rule of Eadgar, 
" King," as he called himself, " of the Mercians," or 
" of the Engle." ' Eadgar showed his independence 
by recaUing Dunstan from exile, and appointing 
him in full Witenagemot to the successive sees of 
Worcester and of London,'' Eadwig, on the other 
hand, lay isolated in Wessex, and was driven even 
there to submit to the forces of revolt. In the 
spring of 958 Odo ended the strife between the 
Church and the king by gathering an armed band, 
riding to the hall where the queen was dwelling, 
seizing her, and carrying her out of the realm. The 
blow seems to have been followed by a threat of de- 

^ " Sicque, universo populo testante, res regum diffinitione saga- 
cium sejuncta est, ut famosum flumen Tamesis regnum disterminat 
amborum." — Sax. Biog. sec. 24. 

^ In the first of Eadgar 's charters of this date (Cod. Dip. 471), one 
of 958, attested by the bishops of Dorchester, Lichfield, Hereford, 
Lindsey, and Worcester, he styles himself " Rex Anglorum." In the 
second, of 959, he is " Rex Merciorum " (Cod. Dip. 480). 

^ As Dunstan was consecrated by Odo, he must have returned be- 
fore June, 958. 



302 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. vir. position, and Eadwig at last submitted to the arch- 
The bishop's sentence.' From that moment he remained 

dormen^ "powerless in the hands of Odo and of his grand- 

gg~gg mother, Eadgifu, who returned to court, where she 
— no doubt again resumed her power," and after the 
archbishop's death must have acted as sole ruler. 
In 959, however, the death of the boy-king of Wes- 
sex put an end to the outer seeming of disunion. 
The King of Mercia was received as their king by 
the West Saxons ; and the unity of the monarchy 
was again restored under the rule of Eadgar. 

The West- f j^g £]^-g^ mcasurcs of the orovernment, however, 

ixixon eal- ^ ^ <-> 

dormen. showcd how Utterly it lay in the hands of the great 
ealdormen of East Anglia and Mercia, whose co- 
operation had placed Eadgar on the throne. Their 
aid had to be paid for ; and the payment they chose 
was the extension of ealdormanries over the last re- 
maining part of Britain, over Wessex itself. From 
Ecgberht's day at least, Wessex had been divided 
into shires, with an ealdorman and shire-reeve at the 
head of each ; but the natural configuration of the 
ground, as well as the course of history, had gathered 
these shires into three great groups: those of the 

^ The Life of Oswald, by a Ramsey monk (in Raine, Hist. Ch. of 
York, vol. i.), written between 995 and 1005, gives the earliest de- 
tailed account of this. " Antistes (Odo) . , . repente cum sociis equ- 
um ascendit, et ad villam qua mulier mansitabat pervenit eamque 
rapuit et de regno perduxit, regemque dulcibus ammonuit verbis 
pariterque factis, ut ab impiis actibus custodiret se, ne periret de 
via justa." This is probably from the information of Oswald, Odo's 
nephew, and disposes of the later stories of Osbern and Eadmer. 

^ A charter, attested by Odo and Eadgifu (Cod. Dip. 1224), shows 
their return to court; and as Odo seems to have died in June, 958 
(Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. xcv.), the reconciliation must 
have been early in the year. 



M€, 




THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^03 



" Central Provinces," or the " shires about Winches- chap.vh. 
ter," those of the old Eastern or Kentish kingdom, The 
and those of the Wealhcyn beyond Selwood in the^dome^*^' 
West. These traditional divisions were taken as „r7~^oa 
the basis of a new organization. ^Ifhere was now, — 
as he remained throughout the reign,' the main 
power at the young king's court ; and immediately 
on Eadgar's accession to the West-Saxon throne, in- 
deed, before the close of the year, the Mercian eal- 
dorman received his reward in the raising of his 
brother yElfheah to the ealdormanry of Central 
Wessex, the ealdormanry — as it is sometimes called 
— of Southampton ; while about 966 the East-An- 
glian ealdorman, ^thelwine, exacted a like return 
in the elevation of Ordgar ' to the ealdormanry of 
the Wealhcyn. Ordgar and ^Ifheah were both of 
the royal kin, both had stood foremost in the group 
of nobles about Eadwig;' and their rise may have 

* Throughout the numerous charters of Eadgar's reign, the order 
of signature in the attestations is mainly the same. From begin- 
ning to end, almost, ^Ifhere and his brother ^Ifheah sign first; 
then the ealdormen of the East-Anglian house — -^Ethelstan and 
iEthelwold ; then Byrhtnoth, perhaps Ealdorman of Essex ; then 
the "duces " Eadmund and ^thelmund. In 962 the place of ^th- 
elwold (who dies then) is taken by his brother ^thclwine. In 963 
(Cod. Dip. 504) we find the first signature of Oslac as " dux," though 
the Chronicle places his elevation to the Northumbrian earldom in 
966. From 966 we find Ordgar appearing among the duces : per- 
haps raised as father-in-law of Eadgar, who married in 965 his 
daughter ^Ifthryth ( Eng. Chron. a. 965 ). In 969 Eadwulf and 
Bryhtferth (who has till now stood at the head of the " ministri ") 
are added to the number of "duces," and in 975 we have a "dux 
^Ifsige." ^Ifheah and Ordgar seem to have died during Eadgar's 
reign, as their signatures Sre missing in the later charters. 

'•^ Ordgar was the father of ^Ifthryth, the wife of ^thelwine's 
brother, .^thelwold, who had died in 962. 

^ -^Ifheah signs a charter of Eadwig in 955 (Cod. Dip. 436), Ord- 
gar as late as 957 (Cod. Dip. 479). 



2o6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. at all, dealt with it mainly as a political power to be 
The utilized for the support of the monarchy. But, in 

dormen^ " f ^ct, it is hardly possible to distinguish between 

955^88 ^^^ work of the one and the work of the other. If 
we read the accounts of the hagiologists, all is done 
by Dunstan and we see nothing of Eadgar. If we 
trust to the scanty records of the Chronicle, Dun- 
stan is unheard of, and the glory of the reign is 
wholly due to Eadgar. The contemporary charters 
supply the explanation of the seeming inconsistency ; 
they show, so far as their evidence goes, that the 
work was one, but that its oneness was the result 
of a common and unbroken action of the primate 
and the king. 

Eadgar. l^ the earlier years of Eadgar, however, the action 
of Dunstan must have been far the weightier of the 
two, for the king was but a boy of sixteen at his ac- 
cession. It was not, indeed, till 966, when he had 
fully reached manhood, that we can trace the indi- 
vidual action of Eadgar himself in English affairs. 
The young king was of short stature and slender 
frame, but active and bold in temper;' and the le- 
gendary poetry which gathered round his name sug- 
gests that as he grew to manhood there was at least 
an interval in his reign which saw an outbreak of 
lawless passion, if not of tyranny. He must have 
been married at an early age to y^thelflaed the 
White, who became the mother of a boy, his suc- 
cessor, Eadward the Martyr; for, already, in 965, 
her death had left him free to wed another wife, 
^Ifthryth, the mother of a second son, y^thel- 

' Will. Malm,, Gest. Reg. (Hardy), -i. 251, "staturse et corpulentlae 
perexilis." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^OV 

red.' It is before the latter marriage, in the years chap.vh. 
when he was only passing into manhood, that we The 
must place the stories which have been saved f rom ^JoJ^gn^ ' 
the poetry that gathered about his reign, such as that gg^gg 
of the violation of a nun at Wilton,'' stories which are — 
mainly of interest as showing that popular tradition 
handed down a very different impression of Eadgar 
from that given by the monastic hagiographers, 
though they may possibly preserve a true record of 
the excesses of his youth. But if this temper ever 
existed, it must have passed away with riper years. 
Dim as is our knowledge of the king, his progresses, 
his energy in the work of religious restoration, the 
civil organization which went on throughout his 
reign, the traces that remain of his rigorous justice, 
the union with Dunstan, above all the unbroken 
peace and order of the land, an order only possible 
at so early a time when the ruler's hand was felt 
everywhere throughout the realm, are more than 
enough to witness his devotion to the task of rule. 

As we have said, it is impossible, in the main acts ^^'^ /"^^/^v 

p€ClC6* 

of his reign, to distinguish between the work of the 

^ The Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 965, makes ^Ifthryth "daughter of 
Ordgar the Ealdorman." Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 255, 
makes ^thelflaed the daughter of an ealdorman, Ordmaer. 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 252, etc., "primis temporibus 
fuisse crudelem in cives, libidinosum in virgines." Will. Malm., 
Gest. Pontif. (ed. Hamilton), p. 190, represents Cnut as thinking Ead- 
gar " vitiis deditur maximeque libidinis servus in subjectos propior 
tyranno fuisset." But the " vitiis " seem to be borrowed from the 
Chronicle a. 958, " one misdeed he did that he foreign vices loved," 
which is nothing but the common charge against his policy of union, 
like " heathen customs within the land he brought too oft, and out- 
landish men hither drew, and harmful folk allured to this land ;" 
while the " cruelty " may be a popular rendering of the severity of 
his laws and of such acts as the harrying of Thanet. 



206 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. at all, dealt with it mainly as a political power to be 
The utilized for the support of the monarchy. But, in 
^dorme?^"fact, it is hardly possiblc to distinguish between 
gg~ g the work of the one and the work of the other. If 
— we read the accounts of the hagiologists, all is done 
by Dunstan and we see nothing of Eadgar. If we 
trust to the scanty records of the Chronicle, Dun- 
stan is unheard of, and the glory of the reign is 
wholly due to Eadgar. The contemporary charters 
supply the explanation of the seeming inconsistency ; 
they show, so far as their evidence goes, that the 
work was one, but that its oneness was the result 
of a common and unbroken action of the primate 
and the king. 
Eadgar. In the earlier years of Eadgar, however, the action 
of Dunstan must have been far the weightier of the 
two, for the king was but a boy of sixteen at his ac- 
cession. It was not, indeed, till 966, when he had 
fully reached manhood, that we can trace the indi- 
vidual action of Eadgar himself in English affairs. 
The young king was of short stature and slender 
frame, but active and bold in temper;' and the le- 
gendary poetry which gathered round his name sug- 
gests that as he grew to manhood there was at least 
an interval in his reign which saw an outbreak of 
lawless passion, if not of tyranny. He must have 
been married at an early age to ^^thelflaed the 
White, who became the mother of a boy, his suc- 
cessor, Eadward the Martyr; for, already, in 965, 
her death had left him free to wed another wife, 
yElfthryth, the mother of a second son, ^thel- 

* Will. Malm.j Gest. Reg. (Hardy), -i. 251, "staturse et corpulentise 
perexilis." 



955-988. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 307 

red.' It is before the latter marriage, in the years chap.vh. 
when he was only passing into manhood, that we The 
must place the stories which have been saved from domeiu' 
the poetry that gathered about his reign, such as that 
of the violation of a nun at Wilton," stories which are 
mainly of interest as showing that popular tradition 
handed down a very different impression of Eadgar 
from that given by the monastic hagiographers, 
though they may possibly preserve a true record of 
the excesses of his youth. But if this temper ever 
existed, it must have passed away with riper years. 
Dim as is our knowledge of the king, his progresses, 
his energy in the work of religious restoration, the 
civil organization which went on throughout his 
reign, the traces that remain of his rigorous justice, 
the union with Dunstan, above all the unbroken 
peace and order of the land, an order only possible 
at so early a time when the ruler's hand was felt 
everywhere throughout the realm, are more than 
enough to witness his devotion to the task of rule. 

As we have said, it is impossible, in the main acts The pubUc 

pCClC€* 

of his reign, to distinguish between the work of the 

' The Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 965, makes ^Elfthryth " daughter of 
Ordgar the Ealdorman." Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 255, 
makes -^thelflaed the daughter of an ealdorman, Ordmaer. 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 252, etc., "primis temporibus 
fuisse crudelem in cives, libidinosum in virgines." Will. Malm., 
Gest. Pontif. (ed. Hamilton), p. 190, represents Cnut as thinking Ead- 
gar "vitiis deditur maximeque libidinis servus in subjectos propior 
tyranno fuisset." But the "vitiis" seem to be borrowed from the 
Chronicle a. 958, " one misdeed he did that he foreign vices loved," 
which is nothing but the common charge against his policy of union, 
like " heathen customs within the land he brought too oft, and out- 
landish men hither drew, and harmful folk allured to this land ;" 
while the " cruelty " may be a popular rendering of the severity of 
his laws and of such acts as the harrying of Thanet. 



3oS 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP.vir. king and the w^ork of the primate. But it was to 
The Eadgar, and not to Dunstan, that after-tradition at- 
.dormen. tributed the general character of his reign. A chron- 
95^88^ icier, writing at the close of the Norman rule, tells 
— us that among Englishmen of his time there was a 
strong belief that, in any fair judgment, no English 
king of that or any other age could be compared 
with Eadgar.' The great characteristic of his rule 
was the characteristic of peace. At his birth, Dun- 
stan was said to have heard the voice of an angel 
proclaiming peace for England as long as the child 
should reign and Dunstan should live.' The proph- 
ecy, if it was ever uttered, was certainly fulfilled. 
" He dwelt in peace," says the chronicler, " the while 
that he lived. God so granted it him.'" In the 
centuries before the Danish warfare, there had been 
constant strife either between the English states, 
into which Britain was divided, or between the tribes 
that made up each separate state. For more than 
a hundred and fifty years the country had been a 
scene of fierce and brutal warfare between English- 
man and Dane. The history of the new England 
had, in fact, been a series of troubles within, and 
then of troubles without. But with the accession of 
Eadgar foreign war and internal dissension seemed 
alike to cease. Within, he " bettered the public 
peace more than most of the kings who were be- 

' Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 256. " Merito ergo non infir- 
ma inter Anglos fama est nullum, nee ejus, nee superioris aetatis re- 
gem in Anglia recto et sequilibri judicio Edgaro comparandum." 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 235. " Vulgatum est, quod, eo 
nascente, angelicam vocem Dunstanus exceperit, ' Pax Angliae quam- 
-^diu puer iste regnaverit, et Dunstanus noster vixerit.' " 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 958. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 309 

fore him in man's memory." ' His rule over the de- chap.vii. 
pendent realms and ealdormanries was, no doubt, The 
the more tranquil for the wise limitation of his domen. " 
claims to government or over-lordship. " God him gg^gg 
so helped that kings and earls gladly to him bowed — 
and were submissive to that he willed, and without 
war he ruled all that himself would." Such a peace 
within and without was partly, as we have seen, the 
result of other men's labors, but in no small part it 
must have been the result of the wisdom and effort 
of Eadgar and Dunstan themselves. The chronicles 
tell us in significant words that the king " earned 
diligently " the peace in which he dwelt. 

In his work of peace Eads^ar was, no doubt, fa- ^'^^f^ 
vored by the state of thmgs in the peoples about 
him. Danger from without lay mostly in the hos- 
tility of Scandinavia and of Normandy, or in the at- 
tacks of the Ostmen from Ireland. But master as 
Harald Blaatand was both of Denmark and Norway, 
and recently as his fleets had appeared in the British 
Channel, he was drawn from all thought of aggres- 
sion in England during the whole reign of Eadgar, 
by the stress of a warfare nearer home against Ger- 
many and Otto the Great." Normandy again was 
entering upon a revolution conducive to English 
interests. Under Richard the Fearless her trans- 
formation from a pirate settlement of Northmen 
into a Christian member of the French kingdom 
and the European commonwealth suddenly took a 
vigor it had never known before ; and this transfor- 
mation told in favor of peaceful relations with the 

' Eng. Chron. a. 958. 

* Dahlmann, Geschichte v. Dannemark, i. 79-83, 



3IO THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARvii. states about her. The Ostmen, on the other hand, 
The had turned, we know not why, from foes to friends, 
dormen. and a good understanding had been estabHshed be- 
955^88. tween them and the EngHsh king, which lasted till 
the conquest of the Norman. Though Olaf, Siht- 
ric's son, the old enemy of yEthelstan and Eadmund, 
reigned throughout Eadgar's days in Dublin, we pos- 
sess coins of Eadgar's which were minted there, and 
it is possible that the Ostmen may have supplied 
him with the fleet that accompanied his progress 
through the Irish Channel.' Nearer home the Eng- 
lish rule over Wales seems to have been quietly re- 
laxed. Under Eadred four Welsh princes had sat 
in the English Witenagemot ; ' but with the reign 
of Eadgar their attendance ceases, and though a war 
in 968' may have forced them to renew the payment 
of tribute, their dependence on the crown can have 
been little more than nominal.* In the north the 

^ Robertson, Hist. Essays, p. 198. In his later years of rule in 
Northumbria, Olaf, Sihtric's son, seems to have been united to the 
English kings by their common opposition to the Danish Eric. 

^ Cod. Dip. 433. ^ Annales Cambrise, a. 968. 

* The legends of the twelfth century give a very different color to 
these matters. Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 251, says : " Jud- 
valo regi Walensium edictum imposuerit ut sibi quotannis tributum 
trecentorum luporum pensitaret, quod cum tribus annis fecisset, 
quarto destitit, nullum se ulterius posse invenire professus." He 
has before told the story of the rowing on the Dee, which retains, 
however, more of its romantic form in the pages of his contempo- 
rary, Florence of Worcester, whose patriotic invention is now be- 
ginning to come into play. " Cum ingenti classe, septentrionali 
Britannia circumnavigata, ad Legionum civitatem appulit, cui subre- 
guli ejus octo, Kynath scilicet rex Scottorum, Malcolm rex Cumbro- 
rum, Maccus plurimarum rex insularum, et alii quinque, Dufnal, 
Siferth, Huwal, Jacob, Juchil, ut mundarat, occurrerunt, et quod sibi 
fideles et terra et mari cooperatores esse vellent juraverunt. Cum 
quibus die quadam scapham ascendit, illisque ad remos locatis, ipse 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^II 

settlement effected by Eadmund still held good, in chap. vn. 
spite of a raid into which the Scots seem to have The 
been tempted by a last rising of the Danelaw.' The domen! ' 
bribe of the Cumbrian realm sufficed to secure the 95^88 
Scot king as a fellow-worker with Eadgar, as effect- 
ively as it had secured him as a fellow-worker with 
Eadmund, while a fresh bond was added by the ces- 
sion during this reign of the fortress of Edinburgh 
with the district around it, along with the southern 
shore of the Forth to the Scottish kingf." 



'&• 



The Danelaw, the srreat Northumbrian earldom isolation 

. of the 

which had been formed in Eadred's day under Damiaw. 
Oswulf, and which passed, in 966, into the hands of 
Earl Oslac,' as well as the territory of the Five Bor- 
oughs, had almost as little connection with Eadgar 
as Cumbria or Scotland. Oslac, the Great Earl as 
he was called," seems to have been nearly independ- 
ent. We find him seldom sittinor in the Witenasfe- 
mot,' while the name of his predecessor, Oswulf, 
never appears in these great assemblies. The ad- 
ministrative independence of the earldom, indeed, 
was formally recognized by Eadgar himself in the 

clavum gubernaculi arripiens, earn per cursum fluminis Deae perite 
gubernavit, omnique turba ducum et procerum simili navigio comi- 
tante, a palatio ad monasterium S. Johannis Baptistse navigavit, ubi 
facta oratione eadem pompa ad palatium remeavit: quod dum in- 
traret optimatibus fertur dixisse tunc demum quemque suorum suc- 
cessorum se gloriari posse regem Anglorum fore, cum tot regibus 
sibi obsequentibus potiretur pompa talium honorum." — Flor. Wore, 
(ed. Thorpe), i. 142. Historically these legends stand on the same 
footing as the other romances embedded in Malmesbury. 

' Pictish Chronicle, ad an. in Skene, Celtic Scot. 

^ Skene, Celtic Scot. i. 365. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Wore), a. 966. 

* Eng. Chron. a. 975. 

^ He signs some half-dozen of Eadgar's charters. 



312 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



The 

Great £aL 

dormen. 

955-988. 



cHAP.vii. ordinance drawn up at Wilbarstone. The special 
aim of this ordinance was to create a uniform system 
"of law; "with the English," says the king, "let that 
stand which I and my Witan have added to the 
dooms of my forefathers for the behoof of all m)^ 
people, only let the ordinance be common to all ;" 
but he did not venture to carry the uniformity into 
Northumbria. " Let secular rights," he says, " stand 
among the Danes with as good laws as they best 
may choose." ' The civil constitution of the hun- 
dred, indeed, was the one reform that he invited 
them to share with the rest of England ; " and this 
I desire, that this one doom be common to us all for 
security and peace among the people." They were 
just as independent in religious matters; while ce- 
libacy in priesthood became the law of the south, 
the Northumbrian law ran, " If a priest forsake a 
woman and take another, let him be excommunicat- 
ed." ' But severed, as it seemed politically, from the 
general body of the English realm, the Danelaw was 
being drawn more and more into unity with the 
national life, and under Earl Oslac the fusion of the 
Danes with the niass of Englishmen, among whom 
they had settled, went quietly on. 

From the first moment of his settlement in the 
Danelaw, indeed, the Dane had been passing into 
an Englishman. The settlers were few; they were 
scattered among a large population ; in tongue, in 

^ Thorpe^ Anc. Laws, i. 273. 

"^ Stubbs, however, points out that "the few customs which the 
Danes and the Danelaga specially retained are enumerated by Cnut, 
and seem to be only nominally at variance with those of their neigh- 
bors ; while of the exercise of separate legislation there is no evi- 
dence." — Const. Hist. i. 226. 



Eadi^ar 
and the 
Danes. 



955-988. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 313 

manner, in institutions, there was little to distinguish cHAP.vn. 
them from the men among whom they dwelt' More- The 
over, their national temper helped on the process of domen^" 
assimilation. Even in France, where difference of 
lanofuaee and difference of custom seemed to inter- 
pose an impassable barrier between the Northman 
settled in Normandy and his neighbors, he was fast 
becoming a Frenchman. In England, where no such 
barriers existed, the assimilation was yet quicker. 
The two peoples soon became confounded. In a 
few years a Northman in blood was Archbishop of 
Canterbury, and another Northman in blood was 
Archbishop of York." That this fusion was fur- 
thered by the direct efforts of Eadgar is certain, 
even from the charges which are brought against 

'■ " Nothing is known of their native institutions at the time of 
their first inroads ; and the differences between the customs of the 
Danelaga and those of the rest of England wliich follow the Norse 
occupation are small in themselves, and might almost, with equal 
certainty, be ascribed to the distinction between Angle and Saxon." 
— Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 227. "The civilization which the Danes 
possessed was probably about equal to that which the Angles had 
three centuries before ; they were still heathens, and of their legal 
customs we know no more than that they used the universal cus- 
toms of compurgation, wergild, and other pecuniary compositions 
for the breach of the peace. Their heathenism they renounced 
with hardly a struggle, and the rest of their jurisprudence needed 
only to be translated into English ; the ' lah-slit ' of the Danes is the 
' wite ' of the Anglo-Saxon ; and in many cases new names rather 
than new customs date from the Danish occupation ; the eorl, the 
hold, the grith, the tithing, the wapentake perhaps, supersede the 
old names, but with no perceptible difference of meaning." — Ibid, 
p. 228. 

^ The Archbishops Odo and Oswald. — Raine, Lives of Archbps. of 
York, i. 118. See also the large number of Danish or Norse names 
— Frena, Frithegist, Thurcytel, etc. — which occur in the list of wit- 
nesses to a charter of Eadgar to the monastery of Ely. Hist. Elien. 
Gale, Rerum Ang. Script, iii. 517. — (A. S. G.) 



314 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP.vii. him on this score. His laws show that he preserved 
The to the conquered Danelaw its local institutions and 
dormen. "local usagcs ; but he did more than this. He freely 
955^88. recognized the northern settlers as Englishmen. 
He employed Danes in the royal service, and pro- 
moted them to high posts in Church and State.' 
Such a policy had to be wrought out in the face of 
no slight opposition. Even in the eulogy which the 
chronicler passes upon Eadgar," the English discon- 
tent breaks out in censure of this policy of reconcil- 
iation. " One misdeed he did all too much that he 
foreign vices loved, and heathen customs within this 
land brought too oft, and outlandish men hither 
drew, and harmful people allured to this land." 
Echoes of the same discontent meet us in the later 
gossip of Malmesbury,' how " as his fame flew 
through every mouth, foreigners, Saxons,* men of 
Flanders, even Danes themselves, sailed hither in 
crowds, and were welcomed by Eadgar, whose ar-' 
rival brought with it great harm to the men of the 
land, men who were up to this time without offence 
in such matters, and inclined in the simplicity of 
their own nature rather to hold to their own than 
to admire foreign matters, but who now learned from 
the Saxons an uncivilized fierceness of temper, from 
the Flamands a loose bodily self-indulgence, and 
from the Danes drunkenness." 

^ Thus Thored, Gunnar's son, was in 961 "prsepositus domus nos- 
trte," and later sent at the head of a royal force into Westmoringa- 
land. — Eng. Chron. (Winch.), a. 966. 

^ Eng. Chron. (Peterborough), a. 959. 

" Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 236. 

* This may have come from his connection with the imperial 
house. Otto the Great " mira illi munera devexit et cum eo pac- 
tum firmissimse pacis fiirmavit," says Flor. Wore, (ed. Thorpe), i, 139. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. , 315 

That the new Danish influence contributed nobler chap.vh. 
elements than these to the national life was seen a The 
little later in the development which English com- dormen^' 
merce owed to the new settlers. As yet, however, 95^88 
the main industry of the country was ao^ricultural. _, — 

•^ , . . TJie agri- 

The system of culture, indeed, had changed little, if adiw-ai 
at all, since the days of the English settlement in ^""^y' 
Britain.' The township still shared the allotments 
in its " common field," while its herds and flocks 
browsed on the common pasture. But the changes 
in the social economy which had been going on 
during the long period of the Danish wars were 
producing a corresponding effect on industrial life. 
Whether from the circumstances of their original 
formation, or from the prevalence of commendation 
to a lord for purposes of protection, the bulk of Eng- 
lish villages were now " in demesne," that is to say, 
in the " dominion " or lordship of some thegn, or 
bishop, or in that of the crown itself. The free 
ceorl had all but vanished ; he had, for the most 
part, died down into a dependent on the thegn ; 
while the possessions of the nobles were widening 
into vast estates. The private estate of the lord lay 
in the midst of the common lands; and the bulk of 
the villagers held the parcels of private land that 
they, too, were acquiring by the tenure of service 
on this estate, which was cultivated on the lord's be- 
half. As coin was scarce and hard to get, while 

^ Kemble (Sax. in Eng. i. 112, and note) thinks that " England at 
the close of the tenth century had advanced to a high pitch of cul- 
tivation," and that " in some districts of England the Saxons may- 
have had more land in cultivation than we ourselves at the begin- 
ning of George the Third's reign." The amounts paid for rental 
and dues seem to show that land was valuable and hard to get. 



3i6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. labor was easy to give in its stead, the bulk of such 
The tenants, or " villeins," as they were called, paid a cus- 

dormen. ' tomary rent in labor,' and resembled the small Irish 

955^88 farmer who ekes out his living by work on other 
— men's land. But there were a few villeins who sim- 
ply held their land by a fixed money rent,' like a 
modern farmer ; and there were others, the " boors," 
who seem to have had no land of their own, but 
worked on the lord's private land like the laborers 
of to-day. As a rule the villein could not leave his 
holding ; but if he could not leave, so he could not 
be driven from it as long as his dues were paid ; and 
if custom fixed the labor -rent without his will, it 
took, in return, no thought of the lord's will in the 
matter. The colibert or sokeman" might even go, 
if he would, though leaving, of course, his land be- 
hind him to fall into his lord's hands. 

Custom- Custom, indeed, rather than any rise or fall of the 

ary dues. ' ^ ■' 

market, ruled the price of labor as well as the rental 
of land ; and in every demesne usage dictated alike 
the due of lord and of serf. The hay-ward, who 
watched over the common pasture when enclosed for 
grass-growing, was paid by a piece of cornland at its 
side. The wood-ward, who watched the forest, could 

^ At the same time we note, both in the laws and in the accounts 
of rentals, or heriots, a steady growth of money payments. The 
amount of coin seems to have been steadily increasing ; the repeat- 
ed regulations as to moneyers indicate a growing demand for it ; 
while there was a large supply of the precious metals, especially of 
gold, in the country in the form of ornaments and utensils. See 
Lingard, Anglo-Sax. Church, ii. 441, 442 ; and for instances of larger 
payments in coin, ibid. i. 443. 

^ The "censuarii " of Domesday. 

^ " Rectitudines singularum personarum." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, 
i.441. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 317 

claim every tree that the wind blew down.' The cHAP.vn. 
hog-ward, who drove the swine to the " denes " in The 
the woodland, paid his lord fifteen pigs at the slaugh- domen^ " 
ter-time, and was himself paid by the increase of the gg^gg. 
herd. The bee -ward received his dues from the — 
store of honey — a store which before the introduc- 
tion of sugar was as needful for household purposes 
as it was indispensable for the brewery." The ser- 
vices rendered for rent were of the most various 
kinds. To ride in the lord's train, to go at the lord's 
bidding wherever he might will, to keep " head-ward " 
over the manor at nightfall, or horse-ward over its 
common field, to hedge and ditch about the demesne, 
or to help in the chase and make the " deer-hedge," 
were tenures by which the villagers held their lands, 
as well as by labor on the lord's land one day a week 
throughout the year, and a month's toil in harvest- 
tide.^ 

The labor-roll of two manors will best enable us Labor. 
to realize what these services really were. At Hurst- 
bourn, in Alfred's day, each hide paid forty pence 
to the lord at autumn-tide, and he received from the 
manor six church-mittan of ale and three horse-loads 
of white wheat with two ewes and lambs at Easter. 
His men had out of their own time to plough three 
acres of the demesne, and sow them with their own 
seed, to mow half an acre of the rent-meadow, and 
split four loads of wood for the rent-hedging. Be- 
sides this they were to do any work that might be 

' Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 441. 

^ Ibid. p. 437. At the head of the servants, in social rank, stood 
the smith, next to him the ploughman, after him the oxherd and 
cowherd, shepherd, goatherd, and swineherd, all in places of trust. 

' Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 433. 



3i8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.vii. called for from them in every week save three in the 
The year.' At Dyddenham in the Severn valley, the 

Great Eal- 

dormen. lord's men had a less easy life. " At Dyddenham," 
955^88. runs its labor-roll, "the services are very heavy. The 
geneat must work, on the land and off the land, as 
he is bidden, and ride and carry, lead load, and drive 
drove, and do many things besides. The gebur 
must do his rights : he must plough half an acre for 
week-work ; and himself pay the seed in good con- 
dition into the lord's barn for church-shot, at all 
events from his own barn ; towards werbold,' forty 
large trees or one load of rods; or eight geocu 
build,' three ebban close; of field enclosure fifteen 
rods, or let him ditch fifteen ; and let him ditch one 
rod of burg-enclosure ; reap an acre and a half, mow 
half an acre ; work at other works ever according to 
their nature. Let him pay sixpence after Easter, 
half a sester of honey at Lammas, six sesters of malt 
at Martinmas, one clew of good net yarn. In the 
same land it is customary that he who hath seven 
swine shall give three, and so forth always the tenth, 
and nevertheless pay for common of masting if 
mast there be." ' 
Manor of In thc samc way the survey of a sinHe manor 

tranborne. .11, , . - . ^ 

Will best brmg before us the new rural society. 
That of Cranborne was one of the most extensive 
in Dorset: it stretched over ten thousand acres, of 
which nearly six thousand remained woodland, 
while three thousand furnished a rough common 

' Kemble, Sax. in Eng. i. 321. 

* Construction of weir or place for catching fish. — Kemble. 

^ Let him build eight yokes in the weir, and close three ebban. 
What these geocu and ebban are I cannot say. — Kemble. 

* Cod. Dip. 461. 



955-988. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^ig 

pasturage/ The land actually under cultivation was chap.vh. 
then but some twelve hundred acres of ploughland The 
with twenty of meadow-land, and its population num- domen* ' 
bered some forty males. The manor was a royal 
manor : two fifths of its whole area remained " in 
demesne," and in the ordinary cultivation of this 
two ox-teams of eight oxen each and ten serfs were 
commonly employed. The serfs of the demesne were 
strictly serfs ; at Cranborne they formed about a 
fourth of the whole population, elsewhere through 
Dorset they numbered from an eighth to a thirtieth. 
But at harvest-tide and on given days through week 
and year the lord called for additional service in his 
demesne from the villeins who held by this labor- 
tenure the other three fifths of the estate. Of these 
eight were villeins, twelve boors, and seven cottars, 
who seem to have been distinguished from their 
fellow-villeins simply by their smaller holdings.' 

Though the villein was not free in a political slaves.- 
sense, though he had no share in the general citizen- 
ship, and his lord " stood for him " in hundred-moot 
or shire-moot, he was in a social sense practically 
as free as the common peasant of to-day. But be- 
neath the serf or villein lay the actual slave,' the 
"theow," who passed in the sale of an estate with 
its sheep and oxen and swine, and who was bought 
and sold as freely. " Herein is declared," runs the 
record of such a sale, " that Ediwic, the widow of 
S^wgels, bought Gladu at Colewin for half a pound, 
for the price and the toll; and v^lword the port- 
gerefa took the toll." The toll on slave-sales formed 

* Eyton, Dorset Domesday, p. 62. " Ibid. p. 45 et seq. 

' See Making of England, p. 192. 



^26 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. one of the most lucrative of the market dues. At 
The Lewes the reeve levied a farthing on every sale of 
dormen^'a^i^ OX, but fourpence on the sale of a man.' The 
955^88 position of the slave, indeed, had been greatly ame- 
— liorated by the efforts o.f the Church. Archbishop 
Theodore had denied Christian burial to the kid- 
napper, and prohibited the sale of children by their 
parents, after the age of seven. Ecgberht of York 
punished any sale of child or kinsfolk with excom- 
munication. Ine freed any slave whom his lord 
forced to work on Sundays.^ The murder of a 
slave by lord or mistress, though no crime in the 
eye of the State, became a sin for which penance 
was due to the Church. The slave was entitled to 
his two loaves a day, he was exempted from toil on 
Sundays and holydays : here and there he became 
attached to the soil and could only be sold with it; 
sometimes he acquired a plot of ground, and was 
suffered to purchase his own release." ^thelstan 
gave the slave-class a new rank in the realm by ex- 
tending to it the same principles of mutual responsi- 
bility for crime which were the basis of order among 
the free. The Church was far from contenting her- 
self with this gradual elevation ; Wilfrid led the way 

' Sharon Turner, Hist. Angl.-Sax. iii. 79, 80. 

^ Ine, sec. 3 ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 105. 

^ " Non hcet homini a servo tollere pecuniam quam ipse labore 
suo acquisierit." — Councils, iii. 202. "Thus Edric bought the per- 
petual freedom of Ssegyfa, his daughter, and all her offspring. So, 
for one pound, ^Ifwig the Red purchased his own liberty ; and 
Ssewi Hagg bought out his two sons. Godwin the Pale is also no- 
tified to have liberated himself, his wife, and children for fifteen 
shillings. Brihtmaer bought the perpetual freedom of himself, his 
wife -^Ifgyfu, their children and grandchildren, for two pounds."— 
Sharon Turner, Hist. Angl.-Sax. iii. 83. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



321 



in the work of emancipation by freeing two hundred chap, vn.^ 
and fifty serfs whom he found attached to his estate The 
at Selsey. Manumission became frequent in wills, domen!' 
as the clergy taught that such a gift was a boon to gs^gg 
the soul of the dead. At the Synod of Chelsea the — 
bishops bound themselves to free at their decease 
all serfs on their estates who had been reduced to 
serfdom by want or crime.' Usually the slave was 
set free before the altar or in the church-porch, and 
the Gospel -book bore written on its margins the 
record of his emancipation. Sometimes his lord 
placed him at the spot where four roads met, and 
bade him go whither he would. In the more sol- 
emn form of the law his master took him by the 
hand in full shire-meeting, showed him open road 
and door, and gave him the lance and sword of the 
freeman. 

It was this agricultural society that practically inland 
made up the nation. In the tenth century Eng- 
land could hardly claim to be a trading country at 
all. Its one export was that of slaves, its imports 
mainly of such goods as an agricultural people could 
not produce for itself. Its inland towns were mere 
villages that furnished markets for the sale of prod- 
uce from the country round; wares from more dis- 
tant points were few. The most important, perhaps, 
was salt; for as there was little winter-fodder for 
cattle, a large part of them were slain at the end of 
autumn, and salted meat formed the bulk of the 
food till the coming of spring. The salt-works of 

^ Acts of Council of Celchyth, a. 816, cap. x. ; Stubbs and Had- 
dan, Councils, iii. 583. On " Celchyth," see same vol. pp. 444, 445. — 
(A. S. G.) 

21 



32 2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. Worcestershire, which had been worked under the 
The Romans, were still busy,' while the boundless supply 
dormen. " of f uel from the Andredsweald encouraged the mak- 
955^88. '^^S o^ sea-salt along the coast of Kent.' Salt-workers, 
indeed, were found along the whole southern shore. 
Metal wares also may here and there have made 
their way to market: for we find mention of an 
iron-mine as still being worked in Kent in the 
seventh century,' and in the ninth there were lead- 
works in the valley of the Severn.* The rest of the 
trade of the country was in the hands of the chap- 
man, or salesman, who journeyed from hall to hall. 
His wares must often have been of the costliest 
kind. The growth of the noble class in power had 
been accompanied by a corresponding growth in 
wealth ; and the luxury of their dress and personal 
ornaments is witnessed by every document of the 
time. The thegn himself boasted of his gems, of 
his golden bracelets and rings ; his garments were 
gay with embroidery and lined with costly furs ; the 
rough walls of his house were often hung with silken 
hangings, wrought with figures or pictures. We 
hear of tables made of silver and gold, of silver mir- 
rors and candlesticks ; while cups and basins of the 
same precious metals were stored in the hoards of 
the wealthier nobles." To supply these costly goods, 

' Cod. Dip. 67, 68. 

" Ecgberht makes a grant of salt-works here, with a hundred and 
twenty loads of wood from the weald to feed the fires. Another 
grant allows wagons to go for six weeks into the king's forest. — 
Cod. Dip. 234, 288. 

^ Cod. Dip. 30. * Ibid. 237. 

' See the numerous instances given by Sharon Turner, Hist. Angl.- 
Sax. iii. 5. 



955-988. 



diffiaclties. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^23 

as well as the meaner wares of lesser folk, must have chap.vh. 
been the work of the chapman, and gave an impor- The 
tance to this class which passed away as the cus- domen!' 
tomer learned to seek the trader instead of the 
trader making his way to the customer,' and the 
chapman died down into the pedler. 

It was seldom that the travelling merchant ven- ,.Ji^, 
tured to travel alone. In a law of Alfred chapmen 
are bidden to " bring the men whom they take with 
them to folk-moot, and let it be stated how many of 
them there are, and let them take such men with 
them as they may be able afterwards to present for 
justice at the folk-moot; and when they have need 
of more men with them on their journey, let them 
declare it, as often as their need may be, to the king's 
reeve in presence of the gemot."' To move over 
the country, indeed, with costly wares was hardly safe 
at a time when ordinary travellers went in companies 
for security, and even the clergy on the way to syn- 
ods were forced to travel together." The highways, 
in fact, were infested with robbers, and the outlaw 
was, through the legal usages of the day, a frequent 
trouble on the road. The roads, too, were often 
rough and hardly traversable ; the repair of ways and 
bridges, though an obligation binding on every land- 
owner, was so often neglected that the Church had 
to aid in the work by laying on her offenders the 
penance of " building bridges over deep waters and 
foul ways."* 

* The chapman is first mentioned in the laws of Hlothere (Thorpe, 
Anc. Laws, i. 33), and in those of Ine (Ibid. 119). '' If a chapman 
traffic up among the people, let him do it before witnesses." 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 83. 

' Lingard, Angl.-Sax. Church, i. 107. * Ibid. 336. 



324 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. VII. 



The safety of travelling was, perhaps, hardly in- 
Tho creased by the presence of other wanderers from hall 
dormen. to hall, who played almost as great a part in the do- 
955^88. "^Gstic life of the wealthier class as the chapman 
~ himself. The visits of the gleeman and the juggler, 
gieeman. or " tumblcr," wcrc welcome breaks in the monotony 
of the thegn's life. It is hard not to look kindly at 
the gleeman, for he no doubt did much to preserve 
the older poetry which even now was ebbing away. 
When Christianity brought with it not only a new 
vehicle of writing in the Roman characters, but the 
habit of writing itself, it dealt a fatal blow at the mass 
of early poetry which had been handed down by oral 
tradition. Among the Franks, Charles the Great 
vainly sought to save the old national songs from 
■ perishing by ordering them to be written down. In 
England, vF^lfred did what he could to save them by 
teaching them in his court. We see them, indeed, 
lingering in men's memories till the time of Dunstan. 
But the heathen character of the bulk of them must 
have hindered their preservation by transfer to writ- 
ing, and custom hindered it yet more, for men could 
not believe that songs and annals handed down for 
ages by memory could be lost for want of memory. 
And, no doubt, the memory of the gleeman handed 
on this precious store of early verse long after the 
statelier poems of Cadmon or Cynewulf had been set 
down in writing. But useful as their work may have 
been, and popular as were both gleeman and tum- 
bler,' the character of the class seems to have been 
low, and that of their stories is marked by the re- 

' Eadgar himself speaks of them as "dancing and singing even to 
the middle of the night." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^35 

peated prohibition addressed to the clergy to listen chap.vh. 
to harpers or music, or permit any jesting or playing The 

,1 • Great Eal- 

m their presence. domen. 

With learning, indeed, the stress of war had dealt gg^gg 
rouo^hly since the time of y^lfred. The educational „ ~~, ^ 

'-' -' ^ Revival of 

effort which he had set on foot had all but ceased, learning. 
for the clergy had sunk back into worldliness and 
ignorance ; not a book or translation, save the con- 
tinuation of the English chronicle, had been added 
to those which Alfred had left, and the sudden in- 
terruption even of the chronicle after Eadward's 
reign shows the fatal effect which the long war was 
exerting on literature. Dunstan resumed y^lfred's 
task, not, Indeed, In the wide and generous spirit of 
the king, but with the activity of a born administra- 
tor. It was the sense that the cause of education 
was the cause of religion itself that inspired y^lfred 
and Dunstan alike with their zeal for teaching. It 
was this, too, that gave its popular and vernacular 
character to the new literature. In y^lfric, a scholar 
of ^thelwold's school at Winchester,' we see the 
type of the religious and educational popularizer. 
He aids the raw teacher with an English grammar 
of Latin ; he helps the unlearned priest by providing 
for him eighty English homilies in all as a course 
of teaching for the year ; he assists Bishop Wulfwig 
and Archbishop Wulfstan by furnishing them with 
pastoral letters to their clergy. His homilies were 
so greedily read that his admirers begged from him 
some English lives of the saints, and the prayer of a 
friend, y^thelweard,'^ drew him into editing and writ- 

* Lingard, Angl.-Sax. Church, ii. 311 et seq. 

* This ^thelweard was possibly the ealdorman of that name, whose 
chronicle has been mentioned. See p. 49, note i. — (A. S. G.) 



955-988. 

Chronicle 



326 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.vii. ing an English version of the Bible, which, omitting 
The such parts as he judged unedifying for the times, he 

dormen* ' carried on from Genesis to the book of Judges. 

It was not only in religious writings that the fol- 
lowers of Dunstan carried on the work of literary 
of revival. The historic impulse which had been given 
" by Alfred and had promised so great a future for 
our annals in the days of Eadward had died down 
under his successors. Of no reigns have we, in fact, 
more meagre particulars, so far as their military and 
political events are concerned, than of the reigns of 
Eadmund, Eadred, Eadwig, and Eadgar. The great 
Chronicle of Worcester seems to have remained sus- 
pended during this period, nor do we know of any 
other record which could have supplied its deficien- 
cy. But the intellectual activity of Dunstan's school 
could hardly fail in the end to fix upon a work so 
congenial as that of historical composition. To 
Dunstan himself we owe the hfe of Eadmund, the 
martyr-king of East Anglia, since it was at his sug- 
gestion that Abbo, the most notable of the French 
scholars, was summoned from Fleury, and induced 
to undertake it. His great assistant, ^thelwold of 
Winchester, was possibly the author of the last con- 
tinuation of the Chronicle of Winchester, the meagre 
and irregular annals from the death of Eadward the 
Elder to the death of Eadgar, which must have been 
put together in Eadward the Martyr's reign, and 
whose defects their author strove to supply by in- 
terspersing them with the noble historic songs from 
Cyneheard's Song Book. Dunstan's other great 
helper, Oswald, unconscious both of ^thelwold's 
labors and of the nobler work of the annalist of the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 327 

time of Eadward the Elder, seems to have taken a chap.vh. 
copy of the original chronicle of Alfred to his The 
church at Worcester, where the meagre jottings domen. ' 
with which he linked it to the story of his own day gs^gg, 
became the beo-inninsr of a later chronicle which 
was afterwards to equal the literary excellence of 
that of Eadward.' The final cessation of ^thel- 
wold's chronicle with the death of Eadgar trans- 
ferred the centre of English historical literature 
from the Church of Winchester to that of Worces- 
ter; and it was Worcester which retained this his- 
torical supremacy till the middle of the twelfth cen- 
tur)^ from the days of Oswald and ^thelred to 
those of Henry the First. In no place was the his- 
torical tradition and the national sentiment cher- 
ished with greater tenacity, and we shall see how 
at a far later time, in the English revival after the i 
Norman Conquest, this national sentiment passed 
through the Latin version of the Chronicle by Flor- 

' The beginning of consecutive annals in this Chronicle, at 991, 
seems to fix its compilation (after working up the Chronicle of 887) 
at this date. Oswald died a year later, in 992, so that the work lies 
with him or his successor, Bishop Aldulf ( 992-1002 ). Anyhow, 
the compiler — if the Peterborough Chronicle, as seems probable, 
accurately represents this Chronicle — knew only the Chronicle of 
887, and was ignorant of the Eadwardian annals, the Gesta of Lady 
^thelflsed, and the continuation of ^thelwold. Consecutive en- 
tries do not begin till 991. This Chronicle is the first or lost Chron- 
icle of Worcester, a work which we do not possess in its original 
form, but which, luckily, is still preserved to us almost entire in a 
copy made for Peterborough in the twelfth century, called the Pe- 
terborough Chronicle. In this early part, too, it is virtually copied 
by the extant Worcester Chronicle, first composed about 1016, and 
of which we have more to say hereafter; while the Chronicle of 
Florence of Worcester is a Latin translation of it made in the twelfth 
century with large additions, from whatever source they may be de- 
rived. 



328 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. ence of Worcester to mould the sfreat school of 

The Latin chroniclers which sprang up with William of 

dormen. " Malmcsbury. From the death of Eadgar to that of 

955^88. Cnut this Worcester Chronicle is the one glimmer- 

" — ing light in the darkness of our history,' 
Decline of fhc Dauish wars had told as hardly on relisfion 
asm. as on learning. We have already seen the strife 
which the Church had long been waging with the 
customs and traditions of Englishmen and the pro- 
found change which Christianity had worked and 
was still working in the national life. But in the 
course of the long struggle with the Danes the 
character of the Church itself had undergone radi- 
cal miodifications. English Christianity had, in its 
earlier days, been specially monastic. But the Dan- 
ish strife had proved almost fatal to monasticism. 
The monasteries had been above all the points of 
attack ; and throughout the Danelaw not a single 
religious house survived. What is more remarkable 
is the almost complete disappearance of monastic 
life in English Mercia and in Wessex itself. In 
W^essex, indeed, the temper of the people seems to 
have become so averse to it that when ^F^ If red first 
Undertook its revival, though he succeeded in draw- 
ing women to his nunneries at Hyde and at Shaftes- 
bury, he was forced to send abroad for monks to 
fill his house at Athelney. Malmesbury, indeed, 
and Glastonbury still went on ; but the latter at 

* This is a most important point in its bearing on any real criti- 
cism of the history of this period. Of this one contemporary Chron- 
icle the rest are only versions of a later date ; and the additions 
made to it by Florence of Worcester and writers of his time, when 
uncorroborated by other evidence, have no higher authority than 
any other historical traditions of the twelfth century. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^29 

least had ceased, if we may judge from Dunstan's chap.vh. 
story, to preserve the character of a monastery under The 
rule.' Its re-establishment under Dunstan's abbacy, Jomen^" 
and the refounding of Abingdon by ^thelwold, gg^gg 
was all that had been done towards the revival of — 
monasticism in the days of Eadred ; and in neither 
case was the revival a complete one.' Both seem to 
have been as yet rather gatherings of clerks and 
schoolboys than abbeys in the stricter sense. 

So great, however, had been the part which mo- 
nasticism had played in our early religious history, 
that statesmen like y^ If red, as we have seen, re- 
garded its restoration as a necessary part of the res- 
toration of religion itself;' and this feeling was no 
doubt quickened by the view of the reformed Bene- 
dictinism which, beginning at Cluny,was now spread- 
ing over Flanders and France. The Cluniac reform 
had already stirred the zeal of English churchmen; 
Archbishop Odo had sent his nephew Oswald to 
study it at Fleury,' and ^Ethelwold, with a like pur- 
pose, sent to the same abbey one of his clerks from 
Abingdon.' It was only in 964, however, that the 

* Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. Ixxxv. 

^ The Life of yEthelwold speaks of the " clerici de Glastonia " who 
accompanied him to Abingdon. It was not, in fact, till Eadgar's 
reign that one of these, Osgar, was sent to learn the Benedictine 
rule at Fleury. — Vit. S. ^thelwoldi, App. to Hist. Abingdon (ed. 
Stevenson), ii. 258, 259. 

' " The movement, with all its drawbacks, was justifiable, perhaps 
absolutel)'- necessary. . . . We cannot doubt that a monastic mission 
system was necessary for the recovery of middle England from the 
desolation and darkness which had been brought upon it by the 
Danes, or that the monastic revival was in those regions both suc- 
cessful and useful." — Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. xcviii. 

* Vit. Oswaldi, Raine, Hist, of Church of York, i. 413. 

. * Vit. .^thelwoldi, Stevenson, Hist. Abingdon, ii. 259. 



955-988. 



330 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP^vii. reform penetrated Into England itself. As Ead- 
The gar's marriage with ^Ifthryth took place, about 

dQrmen. this time, a marriage which connected him with the 
ealdormen of East Anglia, who afterwards showed 
themselves earnest in their friendship for monks, it 
is possible that it was to his new queen's impulse 
that the king owed the zeal he showed from this 
moment in the diffusion of monasticism. It was 
with Eadgar's support that ^^thelwold, who had 
been raised the year before to the see of Winches- 
ter, supplanted clerks by monks in his own cathe- 
dral church and carried the new Benedictinism over 
his diocese, as it was with the support of the East- 
Anglian ealdormen that he turned from thence into 
East Anglia and revived the great abbeys of the 
Fens. It was significant, however, of the unpopu- 
larity of the movement that no further extension 
took place till five years later, when Oswald, who 
had now become Bishop of Worcester, introduced 
monks into his own cathedral city and its neighbor- 
hood, and that Oswald ventured on no further 
foundations in his vast Mercian diocese, nor on the 
introduction of monasticism at all into his later 
arch -diocese of York. Northumbria, indeed, re- 
mained without a monastic house to the verge of 
the Norman Conquest. The Church itself gave the 
movement little countenance. Only two bishops took 
interest in it, and even Dunstan himself seems to 
have done little. His assent must have been given 
to its progress; but though he held the see of Can- 
terbury for some twenty-seven years, he founded no 
Benedictine house in Kent, nor did he follow y^thel- 
wold or Oswald in the introduction of monks into his 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 331 

church at Canterbury. Clerks, indeed, remained at chap.vii. 
Canterbury till the time of Archbishop ^Ifric' The 

In spite, therefore, of the energy of the king, the domen^" 
monastic movement remained a local one. Tradi- gg^gg 
tion ascribed to Eado^ar the foundation of forty mon- ^, — 

■c" ^ J The regit- 

asteries ; and though it would be hard to fill up the larandsec- 
list, even if we attribute to him whatever work was"'^'^ ^ ''''''" 
done throughout his realm, it is certain that it was 
to his time that English monasticism looked back 
in later days as the beginning of its continuous life. 
But, after all his efforts, monasteries were only firmly 
planted in Wessex and East Anglia, and there only 
by the personal efforts of king and ealdormen. In 
the Mercian ealdormanry there were only a few mon- 
asteries about Worcester. In the Northumbrian 
earldom there were none at all. Such a failure can 
hardly be attributable to the mere strife over ques- 
tions of property which these foundations may have 
brought ; it shows a want of zeal for the re-establish- 
ment of religious houses in the people at large. The 
system, indeed, no longer answered to the religious 
needs of the country. Even had the stricter rule 
which the reformers introduced allowed the new 
Benedictine houses to do the same work which had 
been carried on by the mission-preachers of the ear- 

1 Prof. Stubbs (Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. cxix.) shows that Os- 
wald and ^thelwold were the chief actors in the dispossession of 
the "secular clerks who held monastic property," that the general 
mass of the clergy were untouched, that all we know of Dunstan's 
part in the movement is "that he did not oppose it," that he left 
secular clerks at Canterbury, and that his ecclesiastical legislation 
contains nothing against clerical marriage. " It is the enforcement 
of monastic discipline, not the compulsory celibacy of the clergy, 
that is the object of the clerical reforms ; and in this Dunstan only 
partly sympathized." — Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. p. cxix. 



955-988. 



332 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.vii. lier monasteries, they were now not needed for it. 
The Their place had been taken by the parish priest, and 

dormen* the influence of the monastic clergy had been super- 
seded by the parochial organization of the Church. 
But while the Danish wars had been fatal to the 
monks — the " regular clergy," as they were called — 
they had also dealt heavy blows at the "seculars," 
or parish priests. The long strife had told as hard- 
ly on the learning and morals of the priesthood as 
on their wealth. The injunctions of synod and Wit- 
enagemot failed to enforce clerical celibacy. Their 
failure is written on the very face of the dooms them- 
selves. " Let him who will abstain from concubin- 
age with women," runs a doom of the time, " and 
preserve his chastity, have God's mercy, and be 
worthy besides for worldly honors of thegn-wer and 
thegn-right, both in life and in the grave ; and he 
who will not do that which is befitting his order, let 
his work wane before God and before the world."' 
But the loss of social rights seems to have had little 
effect on the priesthood at large, while in the Dane- 
law clerical marriage appears to have been legally 
recognized. 

While it destroyed monasticism and ruined dis- 

^^,^^ cipline in the lower clerory the strife with the Danes 

bishops. ^ . . -^ 

had greatly raised the importance of the higher. In 
the war of religion the bishops had come to the 
front as warriors and as statesmen. In Wessex, at 
least from the time of ^thelwulf, we see them drawn 
into State employment, and politically linked with 
the court. The kings, in fact, seem to have seized 

1 Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 307 : Laws of ^thelred. Cnut renews 
this doom. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^^^ 

on the episcopate as a force which might hold in chap.vh. 
check the provincial isolation and the independence The 
of the ealdormen. The check was to some extent domen!^" 
an eflficient one, for as the ealdorman was the tern- 95^88. 
poral lord of each under-kingdom, so the bishop was 
its spiritual lord, and in Witenagemot or shire-moot 
the two sat side by side as equal powers. It was 
probably with this view that the king had so lavished 
wealth on the prelates — gifts and restorations of 
lands, wide grants of jurisdiction, military and judi- 
cial privileges: it was, at any rate, a distinct result 
of Dunstan's policy. An important political end 
was gained when he placed the choice of bishops in 
the hands of the crown, and insured their fidelity by 
reserving to the crown a power of deposition. And 
not only did the bishops thus become crown nomi- 
nees, but they were by that fact transferred, as it 
were, out of their own. world into the political world. 
With the primacy of Dunstan separate ecclesiastical 
councils cease,' and the bishop's place is henceforth 
in the Witenagemot, or in the royal council. The 
northern primate Dunstan tied to the southern 
throne by annexing to the see of York the southern 
see of Worcester, and this arrangement lasted to 
the Conquest. The rest of the bishops appear from 
this time in the light of great secular powers whose 
wealth and influence were at the disposal of the 
crown, and the bulk of whom were among its regu- 
lar councillors. It is, indeed, from Dunstan that 
we may date the beginnings of that political episco- 
pate which remained so marked a feature of English 
history from this time to the Reformation. 
' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 276. 



334 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. The great ealdormanries In middle and eastern 
The Britain can have had hardly more connection with 
dormen. ' Eadgar's direct government than the earldom of 
955^88 ^^^ north. In Mercia, the independence of ^Ifhere, 
^~ , the ealdorman or " Heretoa^a' of the Mercians," was 
rule, probably little hampered by his acknowledgment 
of Eadgar's nominal supremacy, nor is it likely that 
the supremacy was less nominal over East Anglia. 
What really held Britain together was not the pow- 
er which the king exercised over the ealdormen, 
but the power which the ealdormen exercised over 
the king. Throughout Eadgar's reign, if we look, 
in the dearth of historic information, to the witness 
of the charters, yElfhere and his brother y^lfheah 
stand at the head of the royal counsellors, and next 
to them stand the ealdormen of East Angha and 
the ealdorman of Essex." The power of the crown, 
in fact, was in the hands of these great nobles ; and 
the cool judgment of king and primate was shown 
in their recognition of this fact, and in their absti- 
nence from any useless struggle against it such as 
wrecked England under yEthelred. They restricted 
themselves to Wessex, and mainly to the work of 
furthering public order in Wessex. The laws of 
Eadgar ' are brief, and chiefly devoted to the police 

^ See grant of Oswald, Cod. Dip. 494, " with leave and witness of 
Eadgar, King of the Angles, and of ^Ifhere, Heretoga of the Mer- 
cians." 

'^ For Eadgar's reign our materials are of the scantiest. The 
Chronicle breaks wholly down, and gives some half-dozen meagre 
entries for the entire reign ; the information of Dunstan's biogra- 
phers all but ceases with Eadgar's accession, and those of .^thel- 
wold or Oswald add little but facts connected with the monastic 
movement. For the signatures to the charters, see aniea, p. 303. 

^ Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 258-279. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^35 

of the realm, to developing the remedial jurisdiction chap.vh. 
of the king, securing the regular holding of the The 
courts, organizing the country in its hundreds ' for dormen* ' 
the suppression of crime and maintenance of the gs^gg. 
peace, and promoting uniformity in measures ' and — 
in the coinage.' The same purpose of order may 
be seen in the ravaging of Thanet in 968,' as a pun- 
ishment for the practice of wreckage among its in- 
habitants, and in an extension of the royal progress- 
es which after-tradition associated with the reign of 
Eadgar. " Every summer," says Malmesbury,' " im- 
mediately after the close of the Easter Festival," 
which was kept at Winchester, " Eadgar used to or- 
der ships to be gathered together along every shore, 
since his wont was to voyage with the eastern fleet 
as far as the western side of the island, and on its 
return home to proceed with the western fleet as far 
as the north, and from thence to return with the 
northern fleet to the eastern coast." The object of 
this cruise was to sweep the sea of pirates. " In 
winter and spring," on the other hand, that is when 
his home progress would least interfere with the cult- 
ure of the land, "he rode through every shire, in- 
quiring into the law-dooms of the powerful men, and 
showing himself a severe avenger of any wrong done 
in the name of justice." 

^ The " Hundred " first appears by name under Eadgar. — Thorpe, 
Anc. Laws, i. 259. 

^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 237, 238, tells how Dunstan 
ordered pegs to be inserted in all drinking-cups, that none might 
drink deep without knowing it. 

^ If we may trust later tradition, Eadgar issued a new coinage in 
975, as the old had become so clipped as to have lost its standard 
weight. Matt. Paris, Chron. Maj. a. 975.— (A. S. G.) 

* Eng. Chron. a. 968. ^ Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 252. 



955-988. 



236 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. We need not accept every detail of this story, but 
The it may be taken as showing the existence of an or- 

^domen* " g^^iz^d System of judicial and administrative prog- 
resses at this time, as well as the continuance of 
the naval system which had begun under Alfred. 

Death of . / , . , , i i • i -r- i 

Eadgar. It was, mdccd, with work such as this that Eadgar 
seems to have been mainly occupied throughout his 
reign. Of political measures we see hardly a trace. 
By the union of the sees of Worcester and York 
under a single prelate, Dunstan probably purposed 
to get a new hold upon the north ; and it may be 
that a more distinctly political aim is seen in the 
coronation of Eadgar at Bath, in 973,' when the two 
primates united in setting on the head of Eadgar 
what may have been a distinctively national crown.'' 
But if the ceremony was meant as a prelude to any 
effort for the restoration of the royal power, its pur- 
pose was foiled by Eadgar's death only two years 
after.' His death was a signal for the completion 

' The fact of this coronation alone is given by the contemporary 
Chronicle : Oswald's biographer (about a.d. iogo) seems to look on 
it as one of the common " wearings of the crown," but gives, in his 
verbose way (Vit. Oswaldi, Raine, Hist, of Church of York, i. 437), a 
full description of the ceremony, with the coronation oath ; at the 
Conquest, Osbern, and Gotselin in his life of St. Edith, connect it 
with the close of a penance of seven years laid on Eadgar for his 
violation of a nun. See Stubbs, Memor. St. Dunst., Introd. pp. xcix.- 
ci., who evidently leans to Robertson's opinion (Hist. Essays, pp. 
203-215) that the coronation "was a solemn typical enunciation of 
the consummation of English unity, an inauguration of the king of 
all the nations of England, celebrated by the two archbishops, possi- 
bly with special instructions or recognition from Rome ; possibly in 
imitation of the imperial consecration of Edgar's kinsmen, the first 
and second Otto ; possibly as a declaration of the imperial charac- 
ter of the English crown itself." For myself, I cannot think the 
facts sufficient to support this very tempting theory. 

= Eng. Chron. a. 973. ' Ibid. a. 975. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 037 

of the work of political disintegration. Till now the chap.vh. 
great ealdormen had contented themselves with de- The 
taching their own ealdormanries from the crown, domen^' 
and limiting its actual rule to Wessex, while they gg^gg 
controlled its action by their united influence. But — 
this influence was now to be broken by strife among 
themselves, and by a rivalry for power over the crown 
itself. Eadgar had hardly reached middle age when 
he died, in 975/ and the children he had left were 
both mere boys, for Eadward can scarcely have been 
more than thirteen, or ^thelred more than seven. 
The accession of a child-king left the royal power 
in the hands of any great noble or prelate who could 
control the court, and the opportunity stirred to 
life the ambition of the two great ealdormen who 
divided Mid-Britain between them. 

Their iealousv of one another had placed the Mer- ^^^P"^f'^ 

^ J ^ succession. 

cian ealdorman, yE If here, at the head of an anti-mo- 
nastic party, while ^thelwine, of East Anglia, with 
his maternal uncle, Byrhtnoth of Essex, stood at the 
head of a monastic ; and on Eadgar's death, ^Ifhere 
immediately restored the seculars to the churches 
in his ealdormanry from which they had been driven,'' 
while ^thelwine gathered an army in East Anglia 
to defend the cause of the monks.^ The monastic 
question, however, was a mere side issue. The 
main aim of each of the rivals was to secure the king, 
and their quarrel at once took the form of a dispute 
over the succession, ^thelwine, himself the broth- 
er of the first husband of Eadgar's queen, supported 
the claims of her child, ^thelred, which were backed 

' He was only thirty-two. See Eng. Chron. a. 973. 

- Eng. Chron. a. 975. = Flor. Wore. (ed. Thorpe), i. 144, 

22 



338 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vii. by the boy's mother and the whole monastic party. 
The On the other hand, Eadward was as viarorouslv sup- 

Groat Eal- 

dormen. ported by ^Ifhere. Civil war was, in fact, only 
955^88. averted by the resolute action of the minister who 
still held Wessex in his grasp. The will of Eadgar, 
which named Eadward as his successor, must have 
been drawn up under Dunstan's counsel, and the 
rising of ^thelwine was, in fact, a rising against 
Dunstan's influence. His influence, as we shall see, 
was still dominant with Eadward, while under ^th- 
elred it would have been at once set aside, as it was, 
in fact, set aside as soon as his reign began. Dun- 
stan, therefore, threw himself on the side of ^Ifhere, 
and he was joined by his fellow-primate; for if the 
monastic party backed y^thelwine, its head. Arch- 
bishop Oswald, showed himself greater than his 
party. The constitutional precedent which Dunstan 
had set in the coronation at Bath was now resolute- 
ly turned to use. As the representatives of northern 
and southern England the two primates had but 
two years before set the crown of all England on 
the brow of Eadgar ; they now settled the question 
of the dispute over the succession by setting the 
crown pn the head of Eadward.' 
^"fke"^ The reign of the young king, however, was a short 
Mariyr. and troubled one, and a famine which immediately 
followed his accession no doubt increased the 
troubles." A stormy Witenagemot in 977, at Kirt- 
lington, was followed by a second as stormy meeting 
at Calne, in 978, where " all the chief Witan fell 
from an upper chamber save the holy Archbishop 

^ Flor. Wore. (ed. Thorpe), i. 145 ; Eng. Chron. a. 975. 
" Eng. Chron. a. 975. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 3^9 

Dunstan, who alone supported himself on a beam.'" chap.vh. 
The anxiety of the later hagiographers ' to represent The 
the strife in these meetings as mainly concerned domeiL' 
with the monastic question has effectually distorted gg^gg 
its real character. What we may dimly see on Dun- — 
Stan's part is an effort throughout to save the crown 
from the domination of the nobles. The opponents 
of Eadward had professed to base their opposition 
on fear of " the harsh temper with which he was 
wont to punish the outrages of those of his court; "' 
they dreaded that he would " govern by his own un- 
bridled will,"* that he would be, in a word, what they 
afterwards called y^thelred — a king ' redeless,' or 
uncounselled. In the fear thus expressed lay the 
germ of the rising contest between the great nobles 
and the crown, which was to lay England in a few 
years at the feet of the Danes. We may see, per- 
haps, the purpose of the primate to assert the su- 
premacy of the king in the banishment of Earl Oslac 
of Deira," a banishment which enabled Dunstan to 

' Eng. Chron. a. 977, 978. 

^ The biographies of Dunstan, which are almost our sole materials 
for this time, make the whole history turn on a struggle about the 
monks, in which ^thelwine is the head of the monastic, and JE\i- 
here of the anti-monastic party, while Dunstan is represented as 
persecuted on account of his monastic sympathies. All this, how- 
ever, is wholly inconsistent with the attitude of Oswald, who was 
undoubtedly the leader of the monastic party, and who yet crowns 
Eadward in the teeth of ^thelwine ; and, above all, with the attitude 
of Dunstan himself, who, throughout Eadward's reign, is supported 
by the anti-monastic ^Ifhere and opposed by -^thelwine and the 
monastic party, while on the accession of -^thelred he is actually 
driven from power by the latter. 

^ Eadmer, Life of St. Dunstan, sec. 35. 

* Osbern, sec. 37. 

* See the poem in Eng. Chron. a. 975, which "seems to connect 



340 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^vii. unite Deira and Bernicia under Waltheof, a ruler, 

The probably, of Oswulf's house and so of English blood, 

dormen. as well as an ancestor of notable men. But the 

955^88. banishment is memorable in itself as the first of a 
series of such measures by which the crown from 
this time struck at the growing power of the earls 
and ealdormen. 

Murder of \^ ^^ actual struo^orle between the rival parties, 
Dunstan, it may be gathered, played to some extent 
the part of mediator, but his tendency as the up- 
holder and minister of Eadward must have swayed 
him to the side of yE If here, whose support of the 
king continued to the end of his reign; while the 
party of the East-Anglian ealdormen were, as we see 
from the revolution which followed, opponents of 
Eadward and, with Eadward, of Dunstan.' The 
struggle was, in fact, cut short by the young king's 
murder." Eadward was slain at Corfe soon after the 
council of Calne,° but of the circumstances of the 
murder we know nothing with certainty. Of its 

this step," says Mr. Freeman, " with the predominance of -^Ifhere 
and the anti-monastic party." 

^ It would appear that the monks were less powerful under Ead- 
ward than under Eadgar. This and the predominance of the mo- 
nastic party under ^thelred may, perhaps, account for Osbern's 
sneer at ^thelred as "monk rather than warrior." 

'^ Eng. Chron. a. 979. According to the later story of William of 
Malmesbury, Eadward was returning home alone from the chase, 
when his stepmother, ^Ifthryth, caused him to be stabbed by a ser- 
vant while he was drinking from the cup which she had handed to 
him. In spite of his wound he spurred his horse forward to join his 
companions, but one foot slipping, he was dragged by the other 
through the winding paths, till his death was made known to his 
followers by the tracks of blood. Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), 
pp. 258, 259. — (A. S. G.) 

^ The great council of 977 at Kirtlington, the second at Calne in 
978, were closely followed by the assassination. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



341 



authors we can have little doubt. The party which chap.vh. 
had failed to set i^thelred on the throne four years The 
before now removed from his path the king whom domen^' 
Dunstan had set there. It was they who profited gs^gg, 
by the blow. Dunstan withdrew, powerless, to Can- — 
terbury after the coronation of ^Ethelred, who was 
still but ten years old,' and left the realm to the 
government of the king's mother and her kinsmen, 
.^thelwine and Byrhtnoth. The new rulers made 
little effort to hide their part in the deed, for Ead- 
ward was buried at Wareham without the pomp 
that befitted a king's burial, and no vengeance was 
sought for his murder. " His kinsmen," the chron- 
icle says, bitterly, " would not avenge him." But the 
pitifulness which has ever underlain the stern tem- 
per of Englishmen awoke at the thought of the 
murdered youth who lay unavenged in the grave to 
which he had been hurried. He was counted a 
martyr, and in the year which followed his death 
Ealdorman ^Elfhere was strengthened by the pop- 
ular sympathy to show his devotion to the king 
whose policy he had doubtless directed by fetching 

' See Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 257. The crowning was 
at Kingston, and we still possess the coronation oath that Dunstan 
exacted. " This writing is copied, letter for letter, from the writing 
which Archbishop Dunstan delivered to our lord at Kingston on 
the very day when he was consecrated king, and he forbade him to 
give any other pledge but this pledge, which he laid upon Christ's 
altar, as the bishop instructed him : ' In the name of the Holy Trin- 
ity, three things do I promise to this Christian people, my subjects : 
first, that I will hold God's Church and all the Christian people of my 
realm in true peace ; second, that I will forbid all rapine and injus- 
tice to men of all conditions ; third, that I promise and enjoin jus- 
tice and mercy in all judgments, whereby the just and merciful God 
may give us all His eternal favor, who liveth and reigneth.' " — Kem- 
ble. Sax. in Eng. ii. 35, 36, note. 



342 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VII. Eadward's bones from Wareham and burying tbem 

The with much worship at Shaftesbury.' 
dormen. " The new burial was followed by a burst of pity 
955^88 which forced even ^thelwine and the court to a 
^~7 ^ show of reverence. " They that would not bow afore 

Death of ^ ^ ^ ■' 

Dimstan. to his living body now bow humbly on knees to his 
dead bones."' But, foully as it had been won, the 
power was now in the hands of the two eastern eal- 
dormen, and for a time all went well. During the 
eleven years from 979 to 990, when the young king 
reached manhood, there is hardly any internal histo- 
ry to record. Danish and Norwegian pirates, indeed, 
appeared at the opening of this period at Southamp- 
ton, Chester, Cornwall, and Portland, but though 
their presence shows a loss of that hold on the seas 
which Eadgar and Dunstan had so jealously main- 
tained, they were probably driven off by the English 
fleet. The hostility of the ealdormen and their boy- 
king was directed rather against internal foes, against 
Dunstan and y^lfhere. That ^Ifhere was strong 
enough to oppose them was shown by his solemn 
translation of Eadward's bones ; but three years later 
they were freed from all rivalry by his death," for 
though his son, ^E^lfric, followed him as Ealdorman 
of Mercia, his opponents succeeded in driving him 
into exile in 985, and in putting an end for the time 
to his ealdordom.* The archbishop, who had with- 
drawn to Canterbury, was roused from his retire- 
ment by a quarrel of the king's counsellors with the 
see of Rochester, in which the lands of that bishop- 
ric, dependent as it was on the primate's see, were 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 980. ^ Ibid. a. 979. 

' 3 ibid_ a. 983. * Ibid. a. 985. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



343 



ravaged by the young king's order.' Dunstan was chap.vh. 
still powerful enough to awe the government by a The 
threat of excommunication ; but in 988 the last check domen. ' 
which his existence had enforced on the ealdormen gg^ss. 
was removed, and the wild wailing with which the 
crowds who filled the streets of Canterbury hailed 
the archbishop's death showed their prevision of the 
ills which were to fall on the England that had been 
wrested by one ill deed from his grasp. 

' Eng. Chron. a. 986. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DANISH CONQUEST. 
988-1016. 

The social We havc followcd the course of the political 
" ' ■ and administrative changes which had been brought 
upon England by the coming of the Danes, and 
■ have seen how changes even more important had 
been brought about in the structure of society; 
though in the one case as in the other the result of 
Danish presence was not so much any direct modi- 
fication of EnHish life as the furtherance and 
hastening forward of a process of natural develop- 
ment. It was, indeed, the break-up of the old social 
organization that united with the political disinte- 
gration of the country to reduce it to the state of 
weakness which startles us at the close of Eadgar's 
days,' and it is in the degradation of the class in 

^ "Towards the closing period of the Anglo-Saxon polity I 
should imagine that nearly every acre of land in England had be- 
come boc-land ; and that, as a consequence of this, the condition of 
the freeman became depressed, while the estates of the lords in- 
creased in number and extent. In this way the ceorlas or free cul- 
tivators gradually vanished, yielding to the ever-growing force of 
the nobler class, accepting a dependent position upon their boc- 
land, and standing to right in their courts, instead of their own old 
county gemotas ; while the lords themselves ran riot, dealt with 
1 their once free neighbors at their own discretion, and filled the land 
with civil dissensions which not even the terrors of foreign invasion 
could still. Nothing can be more clear than that the universal 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



345 



which its true strength lay, and not in any outer at- chaf^vih. 
tack, that we must look for the cause of the ruin The 
which now hung over the English realm. From conquest. 
yElfred's day it had been assumed that no man ggglioie 
could exist without a lord, and the "lordless man" ■ — 
became a sort of outlaw in the realm. The free- 
man, the very base of the older English constitu- 
tion, died down more and more into the " villein," 
the man who did suit and service to a master, who 
followed him to the field, who looked to his court 
for justice, who rendered days of service in his de- 
mesne. Eadgar's reign saw the practical comple- 
tion of this great social revolution. It went on, in- 
deed, unequally, and was never wholly complete. 
Free ceorls remained; and they remained in far 
larger numbers throughout northern England than 
in the south. But the bulk of the ceorls had disap- 
peared. The free social organization of the earlier 
English conquerors of Britain was passing into the 
social organization which we call feudalism ; and 
the very foundations of the old order were broken 
up in the degradation of the freeman and in the up- 
growth of the lord with his dependent villeins. The 
same tendencies drew the lesser thegns around the 
greater nobles, and these around the provincial eal- 

breaking up of society in the time of ^thelred had its source in 
the ruin of the old, free organization of the country. The successes 
of Swegen and Cnut, and even of William the Norman, had much 
deeper causes than the mere gain or loss of one or more battles. A 
nation never falls till ' the citadel of its moral being' has been be- 
trayed and become untenable. Northern invasions will not account ' 
for the state of brigandage which ^thelred and his Witan deplore 
in so many of their laws. The ruin of the free cultivators and the 
overgrowth of the lords are much more likely causes." — Kemble, 
Saxons in England, i. 306, 307. 



246 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. dormen. And this social revolution necessarily 
The brought a political revolution in its train. The in- 

conquest. dependence and rivalry of the great ealdormen 

988^16 seemed about to wreck completely the unity of the 
— State. Even in the Church the bishop was parted 
from the clergy, as the clergy itself was reft asun- 
der by the strife of regular with secular. Nothing, 
indeed, but a force from without could weld these 
warring elements again into a nation ; but the very 
weakness which they brought about made the work 
of such a force easy, and laid England prostrate at 
the foot of the Dane. '.>:''' -'^ 

The king- Durino^ the years of ^thelwine's rule a new 

ciom of the 111 i- ' ^ 1 ai 

Danes, storm had been gathermg m the north. At the 
close of the ninth century the kingdoms of the 
Danes had felt the same impulse towards national 
consolidation which had already given birth to Nor- 
way ; and their union is attributed to Gorm the Old.' 
The physical character of the isles and of the Dan- 
ish territory on the main-land aided in the rapid de- 
velopment of a great monarchy;' the flat country, 
penetrated everywhere by arms of the sea, offered 
few natural obstacles to the carrying out of a single 
will ; and from the first we find in Denmark no he- 
reditary jarls, as in Norway, nor petty chiefs surviv- 
ing under their over-lord, as in Sweden, but the rule 
of a king whose nobles were mere dependents on his 
court. Under Gorm, therefore, the whole strength 
of the Danes was gathered up in a single hand. 

' Gorm, according to Adam of Bremen, cam.e of the stock of a 
Norwegian conqueror, Hardegon or Harthacnut ; but nothing is 
known of his previous history, save that he had fought among the 
Wikings at Haslo in 882. 

^ Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 68, 128. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 347 

We have already seen how great that strength was. chaivvhi. 
While the Northmen of Jutland were waging their The 
war with the Empire, and the Northmen of Norway conquest, 
mastering the string of isles from Ireland to the ggslioia 
Faeroes, the Danes, who had grown up in silence 
round a centre which tradition places at Lethra in 
Zeeland, came suddenly to the front and struck 
fiercely to east and to west' In 853 they strove to 
conquer Courland in the Baltic. In 866 they land- 
ed, under Inguar, on the shores of Britain ; and the 
long and bitter warfare, which ended in the estab- 
lishment of the Danelaw in this island, must have 
absorbed their energies till the struggle at home 
which set Gorm on the throne at Lethra about the 
close of the ninth century. Of that struggle, or of 
the king's rule in his new realm, we know nothing; 
but the strength which came of union was soon / 
shown in Gorm's conquest of Jutland — a conquest 
which opened up for the Danes a fresh field of 
activity in the south, and affected their fortunes by 
bringing them in contact with the Germany which 
had just disengaged itself from the wreck of the 
Karolingian Empire. 

In their attack on the south, however, the Danes Haraid 

Blue -tooth, 

' The stories of Othere and Wulfstan, in Alfred's " Orosius," are 
the first authentic accounts of this eastern Denmark, a name which 
the description of Othere restricts to the islands and lands east of 
the Great Belt, and thus denies as yet to Jutland. Wulfstan, too, 
speaks of Denmark as a well-known kingdom with the same bounds. 
But of its history at this time we know nothing, save from some 
sagas which tell of a king's seat at Lethra. — Dahlmann, i. 61. The 
Prankish chroniclers are busy with their assailants from South Jut- 
land ; the English tell of the Danes who reached their shores, but 
say nothing of their mother-land. Indeed, the strength of the latter 
is only a matter of inference from the vigor of its outer attacks. 



248 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. were roughly beaten back ; for Gorm, pressing in 
The 934 into Friesland, was met by the German forces, 
Conquest, under Henry the Fowler, and so utterly defeated 
988^16 ^^^^ ^^^ submitted to pay tribute and to take back 
the mission priests whom he had driven from the 
land. Gorm's life closed with the blow, and a few 
years after' he rested with his wife Thyra under 
their two huge mounds, which still survive in the 
village of Jelling, by the town of Weile. But if his 
son, Harald Blue-tooth, kept peace with his neigh- 
bor in the south, it was that he found fields of action 
as tempting and less dangerous to east and west and 
north. It marks the range of the Danish activity, 
that in the midst of the tenth century one of Har- 
ald's sons was setting up a kingdom in Semland, on 
the Baltic, while another son, Eric, was taken in 949 
for king by the Northumbrian Danes of Britain. 
Eric's rule was a short one, and he fell, unaided by 
his father, though the Danish fleets were now often 
seen in the British Channel. But it was not to 
Britain or to the British Danelaw that Harald Blue- 
tooth's ambition looked. The Danelaw in Frank- 
land, the Normandy which had been carved by Hrolf 
out of the Karolingian realm, was now pressed hard 
by its foes, and forced to appeal for aid to the 
mightiest power of the north. In his earliest years 
we find Harald settled by William Longsword as 
an ally in the Cotentin ; ' in 944 he was again called 
to save Normandy from Otto the Great ; and about 
963 he once more came to Duke Richard's aid. At 

' Gorm is supposed to have died about 936. — Dahlmann, Gesch. 
V. Dannemark, i. 72. Harald Blaatand was born at latest in g'lo. 
' Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 74. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



349 



this moment he was at the height of his power ; for chap, vm. 
two years before the divisions of the Northmen and The 
his own unscrupulous guile had opened a new field conquest, 
for Danish greed, and enabled him to establish an ggslioie 
over-lordship over Norway;' and with his triumph 
over Otto he at last disclosed the ambitious hopes 
that had drawn him so often to Norman soil. Har- 
ald looked upon Normandy as a starting-point for 
a fresh attack of the Northmen on Frankland, and 
called on the young duke to march at his side. But 
he found a sudden bar to his project in the political 
instinct of the Normans themselves. Hate them as 
the Franks might, it was to the Franks that their 
new religion and civilization irresistibly drew them ; 
and their refusal forever closed to the Danes all 
hope of a dominion in Gaul. 

Though foiled in the west, Harald was still a Hamid 
mighty power in Scandinavia itself; and even be- 
fore this overthrow of his Norman hopes he had 
renewed his father's attack on the south, where 
Otto the Great had planted the Saxon duchy as a 
barrier at his very door. Harald was tempted by 
the emperor's long absence in Italy to trouble this 
Saxon land ; but on Otto's return in 965 he overran 
South Jutland, drove Harald to his ships, and forced 
him again to pay tribute and to submit to baptism.' 
A fresh absence of Otto led to a renewal of the war 
in 967, and in 974 it broke out yet more fiercely on 
the emperor's death ; but though Harald brought 
to the field his new subjects from Norway, under 
Jarl Hakon, a decisive victory of the Germans again 

' For date, see Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 78. 
"" Ibid. 81, note. 



988-1016. 



^CQ THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. forced him to peace. His defeats shook his power; 
The Norway seems to have slipped from his grasp ; and 

Conquest. ^^^ later years at home were spent in warfare with 
his rebel son, Swein. Swein's story carries us at 
once into the full tide of northern romance ; we are 
told that he was the child of a slave mother, who 
served in the house of Palnatoki, a noble of Fiinen,' 
where alone the boy found refuge from his father's 
hate. Here, too, Swein learned to cling to the old 
gods of his people, and thus furnished a centre for 
the growing disaffection of the eastern parts of 
the kingdom, where heathendom still held its own. 
Since his last fight with Otto, Harald had resolute- 
ly embraced Christianity ; he had forsaken the old 
heathen sanctuary of Lethra to build a castle and 
church for himself at Roeskilde hard by,' and his 
home in his later years seems to have been the 
Christianized Jutland. Thence " he sent a message 
over all the kingdom that all people should be bap- 
tized and follow the true faith ; and he himself fol- 
lowed the message, and used power and violence 
when nothing else would do." ' But his efforts 
roused a bitter resistance. It was on the shore of 
Jutland, ran the legend, that Harald saw a great 
stone, and, longing to set it up on his mother's 
mound, harnessed to it not horses but men. Then 
as he watched it move he asked of one who stood 
by, " Hast thou ever seen such a load moved by 
hands of men ?" " Yes," said the stranger, " for I 

^ This seems disproved by Otto's having him baptized with Har- 
ald, as heir of the kingdom. 

^ Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 83- 

^ Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, Laing, Sea Kings, i. 426. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 351 

come from a place where thy son Swein is drawing chap. vm. 
all Denmark to him. See now which is the greater The 

1 J ,■,, Danish 

Joad ! Conquest. 

Harald strove to meet the danger by driving gggi^ie 
Swein from the land ; but his warriors forsook him, ^ ~ 

Jomsborg. 

and in a final battle about 986 he was so sorely 
wounded, it is said, by an arrow from Palnatoki's 
hand, that he f^ed from his realm to the eastern sea, 
and died at Jomsborg, a stronghold at the mouth of 
the Oder, which he had won for himself in the days 
gone by, and from which he had maintained his 
mastery of the Baltic/ Jomsborg, if we may trust 
its story," soon became the great difficulty of Har- 
ald's successor. While Swein ' was opening his 
reign with the restoration of heathendom and a 
persecution of the Christian preachers, Palnatoki 
and the fiercer of the heathen Danes, resolved to 
find a secure refuge from the new religion and the 
civilization it brought with it, sailed to the Baltic, 
seized Jomsborg, and founded there a State to 
which no man might belong save on proof of cour- 
age, where no woman might enter within the w^alls, 
and where all booty was in common. It may have 
been that Palnatoki fled thither because his deadly 
arrow, though it set Swein on the throne, raised 

* See the story in the " Encomium Emmse," Langebek, ii. 474. 
Olaf Tryggvason's Saga (Laing, Sea Kings, i. 403) makes the strife 
begin in Swein's demand of half the kingdom. 

^ For the worth of the Jomsviking Saga, see Dahlmann, Gesch. 
V. Dannemark, i. 2,"], 88, note. 

* Suan, Sweno, Suen (later written " Swend," but never pro- 
nounced so), Adam of Bremen's " Svein," and the English '' Swe- 
gen" (where the "g" is soft like a "y"), are all different ways of 
spelling the same sound. See Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, 
i. 88, note. 



,C2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. inevitably the blood -feud between him and the 

The young king ; but in any case the conversion of 

Conquest. Jomsborg from a base of Danish power in the 

988^16 Baltic into an independent State was sufhcient to 

— call Swein to its attack. 
Swan and IH-luck, howcvcr, bcsct him: twice, it is said, he 
borge7s. was takcu by the Jomsborgers and freed for gold;' 
but peace was at last brought about, and a saga' 
tells us how Swein's guile and ambition mingled 
in the burial -feast for his father Harald. "King 
Swein made a great feast, to which he invited all 
the chiefs in his dominions, for he willed to give 
the succession -feast or heirship -ale after his father 
Harald. A little time before. Strut Harald had died 
in Scania, and Vesete in Bornholm, father to Bue 
the Thick and to Sigurd. So King Swein sent 
word to the Jomsborg Wikings that Earl Sigwald 
and Bue and their brothers should come to him, 
and drink the funeral -ale for their father in the 
same feast the king was giving. The Jomsborg 
Wikings came to the feast with their bravest men, 
eleven ships of them from Wendland and twenty 
ships from Scania. Great was the multitude of 
people assembled. The first day of the feast, before 
King Swein went up into his father's high seat, he 
drank the bowl to his father's memory, and made 

' The contemporary evidence of Thietmar of Merseburg shows 
that he was at least once " taken by the Northmen," and that the 
charge of slave-blood was one of his great difficulties. — Dahlmann, 
Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 89, note. The Jomsborg Saga, followed by 
that of Olaf Tryggvason, makes the price of his release a marriage 
with the Wendish King Burislaf's daughter, Gunhild, who became 
the mother of Cnut. 

" Laing, Sea Kings of Norway, i. 404. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^^^ 

the solemn vow that before three winters were chap. vm. 
passed he would go over with his army to England, The 
and either kill King ^thelred or drive him out of conquest, 
the country. This heirship -bowl all who were at ggg^io^g 
the feast drank. Thereafter, for the chiefs of the — 
Jomsborg Wikings, was filled and drunk the largest 
horn to be found, and of the strongest drink. When 
that bowl was emptied all men drank Christ's health, 
and again the fullest measure and the strongest 
drink were handed to the Jomsborg Wikings. The 
third bowl was to the memory of St. Michael, which 
was drunk by all. Thereafter, Earl Sigwald emptied 
a remembrance-bowl to his father's honor, and made 
the solemn vow that before three winters came to 
an end he would go to Norway, and either kill Jarl 
Hakon or drive him out of the country." Whether 
Hakon slew the Jomsborgers or the Jomsborgers 
Hakon, Swein had a foe the less ; and the vow of 
Jarl Sigwald cleared the way for the carrying out of 
the vow of the Danish king himself. 

The vow, however, was to be lonor in fulfilment ; swein the 

. Wikiu"-. 

for hardly had the Jomsborgers steered to their "' 

doom in the north, when Eric of Sweden, whose 
throne had been threatened both by Harald and 
Swein, seized the moment of exhaustion to break 
Denmark's power in the Eastern Sea. Allying 
himself with the Poles and their duke, Mieczyslav, 
his success was even greater than his aim, for after 
fierce sea -fighting he succeeded in driving Swein 
not only from the Baltic but from Denmark itself; 
so complete, indeed, was Swein's overthrow, that 
fourteen years had to pass before he could return 
to the land. He fell back on the Wiking life of 

23 



254 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. his earlier youth; and after a fruitless effort to 
The wrest Norway from Jarl Hakon, who now ruled 
Conquest, there in his own name, he steered for the Irish 
988^16 Channel. It was a time when the seas were again 
— throneed with northern freebooters. The union of 
the kingdoms, the stern rule of Harald and Jarl 
Hakon, the wars of the Danes with Norway, and 
of Sweden with the Danes, above all the strife of 
religions, had roused afresh the spirit of adventure 
and wandering. The rovers who had been absorbed 
for a while by Harald's enterprises in Frankland 
and Saxon -land found no work in northern waters 
during the peace that followed Swein's expulsion; 
and Wiking fleets, as of old, appeared off the Eng- 
lish coasts. Swein himself had probably taken part, 
as a youth, in the piratical attacks which troubled 
the coasts of Wessex and Kent from 980 to 982 ; 
and though these were interrupted, it may be by 
the strife between Harald and Swein, the renewal 
of the raids in 988 ' might have warned England 
of the danger that was gathering in the north. 
Three years later, indeed, in 991, came the first 
burst of the storm.^ A body of Norwegian Wikings 
landed on the eastern coasts, and after plundering 
Ipswich marched southward upon Essex." At Mal- 
don it met the ealdorman Byrhtnoth, who hastened 
to save the town. For a while the tide parted the 
hosts, but as it fell the pirates plunged through the 
ford, and threw themselves on the shield-wall of the 
Englishmen. The wall was at last broken ; the 
war -band of Byrhtnoth was slain around its lord; 

' Eng. Chron. a. 988. " Ibid. 991. ' Ibid. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^cc 

and the broken fragments of his force bore off hisc"AP.viir. 
body from the field. The 

The defeat presaged ill for the resistance which con,fuest. 
England under its ealdormen was to offer to the ggglioie 
Dane.' But whatever strens^th the o-reat ealdor- ^77 , 

-^ c> _ Mthelred. 

manries might have possessed for the conflict was 
broken at this moment by the king, ^^thelred had 
now reached manhood; he was, indeed, already fa- 
ther of two boys, the younger of whom was to be 
known as Eadmund Ironside. He was handsome, 
and pleasant of address, and though he was taunted 
by his opponents with having the temper of a monk 
rather than of a warrior, there were none who de- 
nied his capacity or activity." But behind, and ab- 

' The materials for the history of this time are very scanty, As 
to the chronicles, we really have only one — that of Worcester — 
which is preserved to us in the later compilation made at Peter- 
borough. Fortunately this chronicle is full and vigorous through- 
out, and in some places, as in 1007, it is clearly the work of a con- 
temporary. It was not till 1043 that Abingdon borrowed a copy of 
this and used it as a base for the chronicle then being compiled at 
Abingdon, which till 1043 differs little from the Worcester account. 
This chronicle, with the charters and laws, are the only authorities 
of contemporary and primary value as yet. Two hundred years 
later came the twelfth-century translators and compilers, Florence 
of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, dif- 
fering much in temper from one another, but equally removed in 
time from the events they narrate, and equally swayed by the patri- 
otic revival of their day. It is true of all — as Mr. Freeman says of 
the two last — that though they occasionally supply additional de- 
tails, " it is dangerous to trust them except when they show signs 
of following authorities which are now lost" (Norm. Conq. i. 258, 
note). Beyond these materials we have only the northern sagas, 
which are yet later and more fabulous ; nor is there any contempo- 
rary Norman authority till we reach the " Encomium Emmse." 

^ William of Malmesbury (Gest. Reg. [Hardy], i. 268) wonders, "Cur 
homo ut a majoribus nos accepimus neque multum fatuus neque 
nimis ignavus in tarn tristi pallore tot calamitatum vitam con- 
sumpserit." The cause he sees for this is, " Ducum defectionem ex; 



356 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHARviii. sorbing all, was a haughty pride in his own kingship. 
The The imperial titles, which had been but sparsely 
Conquest, used by his predecessors, are employed profusely in 
988^16 ^^^ charters ; nor was his faith in these lofty preten- 
— sions ever shaken, even at the time of his greatest 
misfortunes. His attitude was thus one of stubborn 
opposition throughout his reign to the efforts of 
the great ealdormen to control the Crown ; it was, 
in fact, his revolt from this control, and his persist- 
ence in setting aside the rede or counsel in which 
it embodied itself, that earned him the title of " Un- 
raedig," or the counsel-lacking king, which a later 
blunder changed into the title of the Unready. 
Unready, shiftless, without resource, ^thelred never 
was. His difficulties, indeed, sprang in no small 
degree from the quickness and ingenuity with which 
he met one danger by measures that created an- 
other. A man of expedients rather than wisdom, he 
devised administrative and financial plans which, 
though they were to serve as moulds for our later 
policy, he had himself neither the strength nor the 
patience to carry out to any profitable issue. He 
was capable of brave fighting when driven hard. 
But impulsive, fitful in temper, changeful, and ready 
to fhng away the fruits of one course of policy by 
sudden transition to another, he was filled with a 
restless energy which never ceased to dash itself 
against the forces round it. He sought safety in 
skilful negotiations with the foreigner when it was 
only to be attained by a firm and consistent govern- 
ment at home. It was with the same quick but 

superbia regis prodeuntem," and this statement is no doubt mainly 
true. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^57 

shallow cleverness that he seized this moment of chap, vm. 
national peril to open his real reign by a blow at the The 
great houses that had till now held him down.' conquest 

The death of Brihtnoth, with that of ^thelwine ggslioie 
in the following year," no sooner left ^thelred's^^.^~}^.^ 
hands free than change followed change. The 
Northumbrian earldom was made less formidable 
by its division between ^Ifhelm and Waltheof, the 

' The charters enable us to follow the course of the great ealdor- 
men under Eadward the Martyr. .^Ifhere of Mercia, .^Ethelwine of 
East Anglia, and Brihtnoth of Essex still sign first as before ; but 
^thelmaer becomes " dux," and in 981 an " Eadwine dux" is added. 
We know from the chronicle in 982 that .^Ethelmser was ealdorman 
in Hampshire (i. e. of the " Wentanienses provinciae ") and Eadwine 
in Sussex. Both these died in 982 ; but ^thelweard, who had been 
a minister under Eadgar, and was also made dux by Eadward (Cod. 
Dip. 611), that is, Ealdorman of the Western Provinces (cf. Cod. 
Dip. 698), was destined to larger and higher fortunes. In a charter 
assigned to 983, but which, if so, must be early in that year, we find 
two new names, Thored and .^Ifric, among the duces (Cod. Dip. 
636), ^Ifric having taken the place of the dead .^thelmser as " dux 
Wentaniensium Provinciarum " (cf. Cod. Dip. 698 and 642). We 
see, however, another .^Ifric signing among the " ministri," who 
must have been son of the great Ealdorman of the Mercians ; for on 
.^Ifhere's death in the same year, 983, his name disappears from 
the charters, and we find two ^Ifrics signing as duces, one no 
doubt the Ealdorman of Central Wessex, the other .^^Ifhere's suc- 
cessor in his ealdormanry. ^thelwine, however, succeeds to ^If- 
here's position at the head of the duces ; while the Mercian ^Ifric 
signs after all but Thored (Cod. Dip. 1279). Both .^Elfrics still sign 
in 984; but in 985 one of them disappears from the charters (Cod. 
Dip. 1283), and the chronicle tells us that the Mercian ealdorman 
was banished in that year. yElfric of Hampshire, on the other hand, 
goes on signing with iEthelwine, Brihtnoth, and .^thelweard 
through the next four years ; and when Brihtnoth dies in 991 and 
^thelwine in 992, we find the two West-Saxon ealdormen, ^thel- 
weard and yElfric, signing at the head of the duces in 994 (Cod. 
Dip. 687). With them are Leofwine, Ealdorman of the Hwiccas, 
Leofsige, Ealdorman of the " East Saxons " (Cod. Dip. 698), and 
^Ifhelm " of the Northumbrian provinces," with a certain North- 
man. * Eng. Chron. a. 992. 



358 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. one earl of Deira, the other of Bernicia, to whose 
The older stock he belonged.' The Mercian ealdormen 

Conquest, had ceased with the exile of yElfric in 985, and in 

988^16. ^his year at latest the king set about breaking up 
this vast power by creating an ealdorman of the 
Hwiccas in Leofwine." ^thelred next secured the 
dependence of Essex by the appointment of Leof- 
sige as its ealdorman/ Leofsige, as the king him- 
self tells us, was a new thegn of the royal court, who 
owed his elevation to the royal favor/ ^thelred's 
attitude was naturally one of standing opposition to 
the great ealdormen who had overawed the Crown, 
and Leofsige was the first of the new series of royal 
favorites, of ministers trained in the royal court, 
through whom the king sought to counteract the 
pressure of the great nobles. The favorites whom 
he chose, indeed, so far as we can trace them, seem 
by their ability to have justified the king's choice. 
It was no doubt under ^thelred's own guidance 
that Leofsige, with the West - Saxon ealdormen, 
^thelweard and y^lfric, took from this time the 
main part in the conduct of affairs. But the revo- 
lution had only helped to shatter what force re- 
mained of national resistance, and the first act of 
these counsellors shows their sense of the weakness 
of the realm. 

Outer diffi- Many of the difficulties which ^thelred had to 

CttltlCSn 

face were not of his own making. The long minor- 

* They first sign in 994. — Cod. Dip. 687. 

^ His first signature is in 994. — Cod. Dip. 687. For his ealdor- 
manry see Cod. Dip. 698. 

^ Leofsige signs as " dux Orientalium Saxonum." — Cod. Dip. 698. 

* " Quern de satrapis nomine tuli ad celsioris apicem dignitatis 
dignum duxi promoveri ducem constituendo." — Cod. Dip. 719. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^,$9 

ity, the rule of ^thelwine, had fatally weakened his chap. vnr. 
cause before he really stood out as king. It must The 
have been during these years that Eadgar's fleet dis- conquest, 
appeared ; and it was the loss of the rule of the seas gssliois 
which told so hardly against England afterwards. — 
Not only was a storm gathering in the east, but 
dangers were thickening to the south and to the 
west. The descents of Danish marauders and fleets 
ought to have warned England to gird itself to meet 
a far greater peril; they were but advance-guards, 
but si2:ns of the new restlessness which was orather- 
inor hosts such as England had never seen for the 
expedition under Swein and Olaf, three years later. 
To the southward lay the land of the Normans, now 
to play a part in English history which was never to 
cease till the Norman duke was hailed as English 
king. Westward a new power was growing up in 
Wales. Utterly unable to unite into a permanent 
State, the Welsh drew together from time to time 
under chieftains who won a brief supremacy; and 
in these years of peace Meredydd, the son of Owen, 
had succeeded in making himself master of nearly 
the whole of what is now called Wales. Silently 
the clouds drew together. In the very year of the 
victory of the Norwegians in East Anglia, Meredydd 
was not only at war with the English, but had formed 
an alliance with the Northmen ; and that this union 
was a real danger we see from the treaty of subsidy 
which was now negotiated with the enemy by the 
king's counsellors. 

Already, indeed, their hope lay less in any resist- ^/^^^^^^ 
ance on the part of England itself than in the 
divisions of its foes. The Norwegian force which 



26o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. had slain Brihtnoth was still on English soil, but 
The instead of attacking it the king's advisers found a 
Conquest, sum cqual to a fourth of the annual revenues of 
988^16 ^^^ Crown, ten thousand pounds, to buy off its 
— hostility." The treaty was not one of withdrawal; 
it was a buying of frith. The Norwegians swore to 
help y^thelred against any foes who might attack 
England ; neither party was to receive the enemies 
of the other." The other provisions of the peace 
are inconsistent with any notion of the fleet sailing 
away. It may, in fact, have been the policy of 
Sigeric and the two ealdormen to hold the Nor- 
wegian force to aid against Swein's expected de- 
scent, a policy of division which was continued by 
Bishop ^Ifheah of Winchester when the descent 
actually came three years later. Their next step 
was to detach Normandy from their Scandinavian 
assailants. Trouble had for some time been 2:row- 
ing up between the Norman and the English courts, 
perhaps owing to the aid given by Normans to the 
earlier predatory descents on the English coasts, 
and if we trust the one account we have of these 
transactions, war was only averted by the mediation 
of the Pope. However this may be, an English 
embassy appeared at Rouen and concluded a treaty 
with Duke Richard, the first recorded diplomatic 
transaction between the two powers, on terms that 



^ The treaty of subsidy was negotiated by Archbishop Sigeric, 
and the ealdormen, .^thelweard of the Western Provinces and 
JEUric of Central Wessex. See Thorpe's Anc. Laws and Institutes, 
i. 284. 

" " And that neither they nor we harbor the other's Wealh, nor 
the other's thief, nor the other's foe." — Ibid. 289. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^61 

neither y^thelred nor the duke should receive the chap, vm. 
other's foes.' The 

Had the two treaties been backed by energetic conquest, 
measures of resistance within the realm itself, they gggl^ig 
would have rendered the enterprise which Swein ^ ~ ^ 

^ Outbreak 

was now plotting an all but hopeless one ; for of war. 
with the Norman ports closed against him, and the 
Norwegian host hanging on his flank, the Danish 
king could hardly have faced a united England. 
But it was just this national union that every day 
made more impossible. The pirate force still clung 
to the English coast; and in 992 yEthelred gathered 
a fleet at London of ships furnished by that city 
and East Anglia, while the fyrd, drawn probably 
mainly from Hampshire and the surrounding shires, 
was intrusted to the leading of Ealdorman ^Ifric of 
Central Wessex and Earl Thored. The joint force 
was to " betrap " the Norwegians ; the fyrd, as we 
may suppose, holding them in play on land till the 
fleet had cut off their retreat by sea. The plan, 
however, was foiled by the English leader. ^Ifric 
had now been ealdorman for nearly ten years, and 
since the deaths of Byrhtnoth and ^E^thelwine he 
had stood second in rank and importance only to 

' This Norman "frith" rests wholly on the authority of William 
of Malmesbury (Gest. Reg. [HardyJ, i. 270). Mr. Freeman accepts 
it as true. This treaty implies that both sides had already received 
the foes of the other. The Northmen were doubtless the foes of 
^thelred, but who were Richard's.? It is possible that Dunstan's 
connection with Flanders, and his policy of drawing England closer 
to it — a step which so greatly influenced the after-relations of Eng- 
land — was meant by him as a provision against Normandy, and so 
was understood by the Norman dukes. The treaties with the Nor- 
wegians and with Normandy were no doubt accompanied by some 
arrangement with Wales. 



362 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP^iii. his fellow West-Saxon ealdorman, ^thelweard ; nor 
The does the story of the chronicle give any grounds 
Conquest, for his suddcn desertion.' It may be that he felt 
988^16. -^thelred's plans to be fatal to his order, or that 
~~" he distrusted the king's personal hostility; for his 
flight, unaccompanied by his followers, looks rather 
like an act of sudden panic than of deliberate 
treachery; but whatever were the causes of his 
action, on the night before the execution of the 
joint scheme he stole to the pirates' camp, and his 
warning enabled them to escape after an engage- 
ment with the English fleet." ^Ifric's ship was 

^ It is possible that the danger by which Wessex alone was im- 
mediately threatened developed what may have been a purely 
West-Saxon policy of subsidizing the Norwegian fleet — a policy 
which was represented by the three rulers of Southern Britain, the 
Archbishop, yElfric, and yEthelweard. Their course of action had 
been formally accepted by the nation in the treaty of the preceding 
year ; but may we not see in the plan now proposed for the destruc- 
tion of the Norwegians the triumph of a party in the king's council 
hostile to the policy of the southern ealdormen, and to any alliance 
with the enemy ? The betrayal of the Norwegians seems to have 
been, in fact, a distinct breach of treaty on the part of England, an 
attempted act of treachery such as was carried out ten years later 
on St. Brice's Day, possibly by the advice of the same party among 
the Witan. Under these circumstances ^Ifric's conduct may have 
another explanation than that of deliberate treason. His province 
was in the utmost danger ; he had been responsible for the policy 
hitherto pursued ; and the sense of the peril of so rash and false a 
course as that now adopted may have urged him to give warning 
to the Norwegians so as to avert the catastrophe. This explanation 
of his conduct would seem to agree with the after-course of the 
story, with ^Ifric's later return to the first place among the ealdor- 
men, with the fact that his place in Hampshire does not seem to 
have been filled up during his absence, and that Bishop ^Ifheah, of 
Winchester, apparently acted instead of him two years later in face 
of the threatened attack of 994, and carried out, in union with Eal- 
* dorman ^thelweard, exactly the same policy. — (A. S. G.) 

" Eng. Chron. (Abingdon), a. 992. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



3^3 



captured in the fight, but the ealdorman may have chaivvih. 
escaped and accompanied the Northmen when, in The 
993, their fleet sailed along the coast, ravaged at conquest, 
the mouth of the Humber, and sacked Bamborough. ggsTioie 
As iEthelred chose this moment for ordering his son — 
yElfgar to be blinded, it may be in punishment for 
his father's treason/ 

The Norwea^ian fleet, however, was only the ^.d- ^'^'Z^"^'^" 
vance-guard of the greater host which was gathermg 
in the Irish Channel. The Wikings mustered not 
only round Swein, but round Olaf Tryggvason, a 
claimant to the throne of Norway, though driven, as 
yet like Swein himself, to find a kingdom on the 
seas. Olaf had been long in the western waters ; 
his saga makes him harry the coasts of Scotland, 
fight in Man and the Hebrides, and plunder along 
either coast of the Irish Channel," before his junc- 
tion with Swein ; and their joint force must have 
drawn to it all the rovers of the seas.' The prep- 

' Eng. Chron. (Abingdon), a. 993. 

" Laing, Sea Kings, i. 396-398. According to the saga, " When 
Olaf left the west, intending to sail to England, he came to the Scilly 
Isles, lying westward from England in the ocean. . . . While he lay 
in the Scilly Isles he heard of a seer or fortune-teller on the islands 
who could tell beforehand things not yet done." Having tried this 
man's skill, " Olaf perceived he was a true fortune-teller, and had 
the gift of prophecy. He went once more to the hermit and asked 
how he came to have such wisdom. The hermit replied that the 
Christian's God Himself let him know all that he desired ; and he 
brought before Olaf many great proofs of the power of the Al- 
mighty. Olaf agreed to let himself be baptized, and he and all his 
followers were baptized forthwith. He remained here a long time, 
took the true faith, and got with him priests and other learned 
men." — (A. S. G.) 

' The sense of danger was no doubt quickened by a conscious- 
ness of intrigue at home, for there were certainly English invita- 
tions addressed to Swein. See Cod. Dip. 704, where ^theric, an 



364 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP.viii. arations for this alliance and joint enterprise must 
The have occupied a considerable time, and it is no 
Conquest, doubt in the anticipation of this great blow that 
988^16. ^^ must find the secret of English policy in the 
years which preceded its actual delivery, and espe- 
cially the secret of the treaty of subsidy which was 
concluded by y^lfric and Sigeric with the Norman 
duke. In September, 994, King Olaf and King 
Swein, with a joint fleet of nearly a hundred ships, 
entered the Thames unopposed. It was significant 
of the new station which London was from this 
time to occupy in our history that their first anchor- 
age on Lady-day was off its walls ; and that though 
they at once attacked the city, they were beaten 
back by the stout fighting of the burghers, and 
forced at last to sail away, harrying, burning, and 
man-slaying along the southern coast.' At South- 
ampton they found at last an entry into the land, 
and taking horse there the host' rode for a while 
without opposition, till their progress was checked 
by the appearance of y^thelred with an army at 
Andover. It seemed as if the fortune of England 
was to be settled by the sword; but the policy of 
the young king and of his advisers. Bishop ^Ifheah, 
of Winchester, and Ealdorman ^thelweard,' of west- 
ern Wessex, was one of diplomacy rather than of 
arms. Their secret hope was still to break the 
storm by dividing Northman from Northman, and 

East Saxon, is charged with having promised to support Swein on 
his arrival., 

* Eng. Chron. a. 994. " They there bore more harm and evil than 
they ever bethought them any burghmen should do." 

* ^thelweard always signs first among the duces after ^thel- 
wine's death. See Cod. Dip. 698. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



365 



with this view a truce was arranged by which the chap, vm. 
army of the two kings, on payment of sixteen thou- The 
sand pounds of gold, and a promise of suppHes from conquest, 
all Wessex, took up its winter- quarters at South- Qggl^ig 
ampton. ^thelred's hopes were realized, however, — 
rather by his good-luck than by his diplomacy; for 
during the winter's rest news came from Norway 
of the growing unpopularity of Jarl Hakon, and of 
the cry of its people for a king of Harald Fair-hair's 
stock.' Olaf became eager to end his work in Eng- 
land and to set sail for the north. It was therefore 
with little difficulty that Bishop ^Ifheah and Ealdor- 
man ^thelweard, aided by the difference of religion 
between the two kings — for Olaf was now a Chris- 
tian and Swein a heathen — managed to break their 
league, and to bring the Norwegian leader to an in- 
terview with ^thelred at Andover.'" In return for 
the king's gifts, Olaf pledged himself to withdraw 
from England and return to it no more, and his re- 
treat, in the summer of 995, forced Swein also to 
withdraw. 

The two years that followed this withdrawal were Weakness 

• 1-1 -11 1 1 o/^/ie 

spent m a quiet which might have been used to £n^/h/i 
build up an efficient system of national defence.' "'■'^"'^^• 

^ Olaf Tryggvason's Saga, Laing, Sea Kings, i. 418. 

* Eng. Chron. a. 994. 

^ In the present period William of Malmesbury and Florence of 
Worcester have given the tone to the general accounts of modern 
writers. Both have done much to confuse the annals of the time, 
especially Florence. His work, as far as 994, seems to be a literal 
rendering of the first Worcester' (or Peterborough) Chronicle, 
(though probably taken from the copy preserved in a second Wor- 
cester Chronicle, as we may see from the entry at 1004), with occa- 
sional ecclesiastical insertions from a Ramsey Chronicle and other 
sources, and the usual rhetorical amplifications of the time. After 



^66 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. But nothing was done. The king's power, indeed, 
The must have been shaken by the last year's events. 
Conquest. ^OY wc uot Only find .^Ifric again in England, but 
988^16. replaced in his old dignity as Ealdorman of the 
Central Provinces, and even in his second place 
amona: the roval counsellors.' We know nothinsf of 
the circumstances of his return ; but the fact itself 
shows that the royal power, after its short outburst 
of vigor, was again ebbing before the force of the 
great nobles. Its weakness told on the state of the 
realm. In 997 a band of pirates,' who may have 
been Ostmen from Ireland, appeared in the mouths 
of the Severn and the Tamar, harried Cornwall with- 
out opposition, and advancing eastward the year 
after, carried their raids over Dorset, and finally 
took up their winter-quarters in the Isle of Wight, 
where they levied supplies from the coasts of Hamp- 
shire and Sussex." In 999 they pushed still farther 

this point various noteworthy insertions occur in his work which 
are without foundation in, or even in opposition to, the statements 
of the Chronicle, and especially in the account of Eadric from 1006 
onward. A poor translator of the Chronicle, he seems to have 
: been a violent partisan, whose patriotism led him to account for 

every English defeat by a theory of betrayal. The story, as the 
Chronicle gives it, is one which is reasonable, if hard to follow from 
want of detail ; but as the insertions of Florence have moulded it, 
the treason of the ealdormen accounts for every national defeat, 
and .^thelred is responsible for the slackness of the national re- 
sistance. As we have tried to show, however, the causes which 
underlay the great crash were not the individual action of this or 
that man, the treason of an ealdorman, or the weakness of a king, 
but must be sought in the social and political conditions of the 
time. 

^ He signs again as usual from 994. See Cod. Dip. 687, 688, 
1289, etc. 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 997. 

^ Eng. Chron. 998. "And forces were often gathered against 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 267 

on, entered the Medway, attacked Rochester, and chap. vm. 
harried West Kent.' Whatever may have been the The 
cause of .^thehxd's inactivity before, this daring at- conquest, 
tack at last aroused both king and Witan. Danger gggl^ig 
threatened again on every hand: from Norman — 
and from Ostmen, with wikings from Man and 
Northmen from Cumberland. Ship-fyrd and land- 
fyrd were summoned, but delay followed delay, and 
the pirates were suffered to withdraw unharmed to 
the Norman harbors." The absence of any attempt, 
three years before, to meet Swein's force at sea 
may be accounted for by the fact that the English 
vessels were too small to face the huge war -ships 
which were now employed by the Scandinavian 
kings ; the failure to meet these pirates ' shows 
that the naval system which had been built up by 
Alfred had now been suffered to break utterly 
down, ./^thelred's action at this moment suggests 
such a failure of the fleet. As if aware of the weak- 
ness of his own naval forces he now took into his 
service a force of Danes, with Pallig,* a brother-in- 
law of Swein, among them, and used this to clear 
the seas. The first point at which the king struck 
was Cumberland — the district had only just become 
mainly Norse in blood, but its position on the west- 
ern coast made it perilous to the realm, and it had 

them ; but as soon as they should have joined battle, then there was 
ever, through some cause, flight begun, and in the end they ever 
had the victory." 

* Eng. Chron. a. 999. ^ Ibid. 1000. 

^ " When the ships were ready, then the crew delayed from day 
to day, and distressed the poor people that lay in the ships." — Eng. 
Chron. a. 999. 

* Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (ed. Hardy), i. 289, 



268 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.viii.no doubt given aid to the Ostmen who had been 

The harrying in the Channel. After descents on the 

conquest. Isle of Man and on Cumberland/ ^thelred again 

Qfi»~^ic turned southward to follow the freebooters to their 

988-1016. 

— refuge across the Channel. If we may trust the 
Norman chroniclers, the king's descent on the coast 
of the Cotentin was roughly repulsed, and it may 
have been the discouragement of this failure which 
drove him anew to abandon warfare for his old field 
of diplomacy. 
Death of X he danger from the north, indeed, had now be- 
come a yet more pressmg one. At the death oi 
the Swedish king, Eric, Swein's fortunes had at last 
seen a change, for Denmark threw off the Swedish 
yoke and recalled its king." Swein, indeed, had still 
to war with Eric's son, Olaf, till the mediation of 
Olaf's mother, whom he wedded, brought peace with 
Sweden, and enabled him to renew his father's effort 
to establish a supremacy over Norway. So great 
was the power of Olaf Tryggvason that it was only 
in league with the Swedes and Jarl Hakon's son, 
Eric, that Swein ventured to attack him ; but ill- 
luck threw the Norwegian king, with but a few ves- 
sels, into the midst of the enemy's fleet as it lurked 
among the islands off his coast. The fight in which 
he fell was long famous in the north. " King Olaf 
stood on the Serpent's quarter-deck, high above the 

^ Eng. Chron. a. looo. The Norse settlement of Cumberland was 
such a source of danger in itself, as much probably to Malcolm of 
Scots as to ^thelred, that I see no reason to prefer the story in 
Fordun, iv. 34, to that in Henry of Huntingdon, a. 1000 (Arnold), 
p. 170. 

^ This was about A. D. 1000. — Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, 
i. 92. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



369 



rest. He had a gilded shield and a helm inlaid withcnAr.vm. 
gold ; over his armor he wore a short, red coat, and The 
was easy to be distinguished from other men. When conquest. 
Kino- Olaf saw that the scattered forces of the ene- ao^Vt^^a 

c> 988-1016. 

my gathered themselves under the banners of their — 
ships, he asked, ' Who is the chief of the force right 
over against us .?' He was answered that it was 
King Swein, with the Danish host. The king re- 
plied, ' W^e are not afraid of these soft Danes, for 
there is no bravery in them. But who are they to 
the right .?' He was told King Olaf, with the Swedes. 
' Better for the Swedes,' he said, ' to be sitting at 
home, killing their sacrifices, than venturing under 
our weapons from the Lon^- Serpent ! But whose 
are the big ships to larboard V ' That is Earl Eric 
Hakonson,' said they. 'Ah!' said the king, 'he, 
methinks, has good ground for meeting us, and we 
may look for sharp fighting with his men, for they 
are Northmen like ourselves.' " It was, indeed. Earl 
Eric's men that pressed Olaf hardest in the fight 
that followed; and at last earl's ship and king's ship 
lay side by side. " So thick flew spears and arrows 
into the Serpent that the men's shields could scarce 
contain them, for the Serpent was girt in on all 
sides by our ships." Though Olaf's men fell fast, 
" Einar Tambarskelver, one of the sharpest of bow- 
shooters, stood yet by the mast and shot with his 
bow." But as he drew his bow an arrow from Eric's 
ship hit it in the midst and the bow was broken. 
'"What is that,' cried King Olaf, 'that broke with 
such a noise T ' Norway, king, from thy hands !' 
cried Einar. ' No, not quite so much as that,' said 
Olaf ; ' take my bow and shoot !' and he tossed the 

24 



man mar 
riaze. 



2^0 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. bow to him. Einar took the bow and drew it over 
The the arrow's head. ' Too weak, too weak,' he said, 

CoSest ' ^o^ ^^^ ^o^ °^ ^ mighty king !' and throwing down 

■~ the bow he took sword and shield, and fought val- 

— iantly." ' The fight, however, was all but over ; so 

few were the fiohters that Eric could board the 

O 

Serpent ; the little group about the king were slain; 
and Olaf himself, throwing his shield over his head, 
leaped desperately into the sea. 
The Nor- Mastcr, by this victory, of the North, Swein's hands 
were free for his long-planned attack on England ; 
and in 1002 it was clear that such an attack was 
impending. To deprive the Danish king of Nor- 
man aid and to close the Norman harbors against 
him was an obvious measure of precaution ;' but as 
yet England had failed in securing the neutrality of 
Normandy, either by treaties or by force of arms, 
v^thelred now resolved to bind Normandy to him 
by a personal bond, and in the Lent of 1002 Duke 
Richard's daughter, Emma, crossed to the shores 
of England as its king's wife. The step which the 
kins: took was one of the highest moment. In it 
Y^thelred broke away from the traditional policy of 
his house, which from ^thelstan downward had 
aimed at crushing or curbing the Northmen of the 
Channel, by a measure which could not but link 
their fortunes with the fortunes of England itself. 
But Normandy was now a wholly different power 

' Laing, Sea Kings of Norway, i. 475. 

^ "The Jarls of Rouen reckoned themselves of kin to the chiefs 
in Norway, and held them in such respect that they were always 
the greatest friends of the Northmen ; and every Northman found 
a friendly country in Normandy, if he needed it." — St, Olaf's Saga, 
Laing, Sea Kings, ii. 16. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 371 

from the pirate State which had roused jealous fear chap. vm. 
in Eadward or ^thelstan. The century which had The 
passed since the settlement of the Northmen along conquest, 
the Seine had seen the steady growth of the duchy ggglioie 
in extent and in power. Much of this was due to — " 
the ability of its rulers, to the vigor and wisdom 
with v/hich Hrolf forced order and justice on the 
new community, as well as to the political tact with 
which both Hrolf and William Longsword clung 
to the Karolings in their strife with the dukes of 
Paris. But still more was owing to the steadiness 
with which both these rulers remained faithful to 
the Christianity which had been imposed on the 
Northmen as a condition of their settlement, and 
to the firm resolve with which they trampled down 
the temper and traditions which their people had 
brought from their Scandinavian homeland, and 
welcomed the language and civilization which came 
in the wake of their neisfhbors' relioion. 

The difficulties that met the dukes were indeed ^^'^"/^'''^•^ 

of the 

enormous. Turn to France as they might, it was Norman 
long before France would turn to them. It dis- 
believed in their religious earnestness, it credited 
wild stories about Hrolf 's sacrifices on his death- 
bed, about the apostasy of William and his boy. It 
disbelieved in their craving for admission into the 
body of French nationality and French civilization 
— it called the Normans " pirates," and their chief 
the "pirates' duke." The very sovereigns whom 
they supported looked on them as intruders to be 
guarded against, and to be thrust out of the land 
if it were possible. They were girt in by hostile 
States, they were threatened at sea by England, 



272 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. under y^thelstan a network of alliances menaced 
The them with ruin. Once a French army occupied 
conquest. Rouen, and a French king held the pirates' land at 
988^16 ^^'^^ ^^^^ ' °^^^ ^^^ German lances were seen from 
— the walls of their capital. Nor were their difii- 
culties within less than those without. The subject 
population which had been trodden underfoot by 
the northern settlers was seething with discontent. 
The policy of Christianization and civilization broke 
the Normans themselves into two parties. A great 
portion of the people clung to their old religion and 
their old tongue ; and this body was continually re- 
inforced by fresh incomers from the north or from 
the English Danelaw, and strengthened by those 
connections with its heathen brethren in the Chan- 
nel which were forced on the duchy by the French 
attacks. The very conquests of Hrolf and his suc- 
cessor, the Bessin, the Cotentin, had to be settled 
and held by the new-comers, who made them 
strongholds of heathendom. The strength of this 
party of resistance was seen in a revolt which shook 
the throne of William Longsword, in the concession 
it forced from him that his child should be reared 
in the Bessin, in the pagan reaction which followed 
his death and gave a pretext for the invasion of 
Lewis From -over -sea, as well as in the stubborn 
resistance to change which must have gone on 
throughout the reign of the two dukes who fol- 
lowed William, ere it broke out for the last time 
in the revolt of Val-es-dunes. 
TAetV But amidst difficulties from within and from with- 
%n'cf. out the dukes held firm to their course, and their 
stubborn will had its reward. In spite of reinforce- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^73 

ment from their pirate - brethren, the balance of chap, vm. 
strength went more and more against the men who The 
clung to the northern customs and the northern conquest, 
tongue. By the end of William Longsword's days ggsTioie 
all Normandy, save the newly- settled districts of — 
the west, was Christian and spoke French. So, too, 
in spite of the hatred and leagues of his neighbors, 
the Norman never loosed his grip from the land he 
had won. Attack, indeed, only widened its bounds, 
and added to the older duchy the broad lands of the 
Bessin and Cotentin. The work of the statesman 
at last completed the work of the sword. As the 
connection of the dukes with the Karoling kings 
had given them the land, and helped them for fifty 
years to hold it against the House of Paris, so in 
the downfall of the Karolings the sudden and 
adroit change of front which bound the Norman 
rulers to the House of Paris in its successful strus:- 
gle for the Crown secured the land forever to the 
Northmen. The close connection which France 
was forced to maintain with the State whose sup- 
port held the new royal line on its throne told both 
on kingdom and duchy. The French dread of the 
"pirates" died gradually away, while French influ- 
ence spread yet more rapidly over a people which 
clung so closely to the French crown. 

It was thus that the social and religious chansfe //j ?w«//j-. 
which was in full play at the death of William 
Longsword, took a new strength and vigoi through 
the days of his successor, Duke Richard the Fear- 
less, whose long reign stretched over more than 
half a century, from 943 to 996. It opened, indeed, 
with a storm of reaction, the terrible strife which 



374 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. all but laid the duchv at the feet of Lewis From- 
The over -sea. But the storm soon died down into a 

conquest, profound repose. Without, all danger passed away. 

988^16 France, under its new rulers, was friendly. The 
— England of Eadgar was no longer anxious about 
Norman aid to the Danelaw. The Breton was 
overmastered. The Fleming held his hand. And 
within the duchy itself the Normans had learned 
the danger of civil strife. So tranquil was the land 
that hardly an event is recorded on the other side 
the Channel for the thirty years that cover the 
reigns of Eadred, Eadgar, and Eadmund the Martyr. 
In this long stillness the fusion of conquerors and 
conquered, the Christianization and civilization of 
the Norman, his assimilation in political and social 
temper to the France beside him, went steadily on. 
If the free institutions of the north had passed to 
Norman soil their very memory was now lost. Save 
for a dim tradition of "the Laws of Hrolf," the 
power of the duke was henceforth unchecked by 
legal bounds; and the northern sense of equality 
faded away as the duchy drifted towards the feu- 
dalism of the countries around it. A baronage 
sprang from the friends or children of the dukes, 
whose houses were to stamp their names on our 
later history. The kinsmen of Richard's wife, 
Gunnor, became heads of great families which 
played their part on both French and English soil. 
From her brother Herfast sprang the house of Fitz- 
Osbern ; from her children came the counts of Eu 
and of Brionne, as well as the counts of Mortain. 
The lords of Belesme, the Montgomeries, the Beau- 
monts, rose into power on the Norman border-land, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



375 



while within it Giffards and Tancarvilles, War- chap. vm. 
rennes and Mowbrays and Mortimers, came to The 
the front in the tranquil years during which Rich- conquest, 
ard the Fearless transformed the pirates' land into ggglioie 
a feudal Normandy. — 

The reign of Richard the Good stretched like The Etig- 
that of his father over a long tract of years, from uecUon. 
996 to 1026; but they were still for the most part 
years of tranquillity. Within the duchy, indeed, a 
fierce outbreak of the peasantry against the grow- 
ing feudalism had to be trodden out in blood ; but 
that done all was peace, and the process of civiliza- 
tion and Christianization went steadily on. People 
and duke, indeed, showed the same temper, the same 
daring and passionate courage, the same craft, cun- 
ning, wariness, secrecy, patience, the same steady 
industry and shrewdness in business, which before 
many years were over was to make them the best 
diplomatists, fighters, lawyers, and builders of their 
day. Without, Richard looked on at the revolu- 
tions of the France across his borders with little 
interference, save the giving a general support to 
the king at Paris. But in spite of this seeming 
inaction it was the reign of Richard the Good that 
saw the most momentous event in the whole history 
of Normandy. The keen eye of ^thelred detected 
the change which had come over the temper of the 
duchy, and saw the possibility of detaching it from 
the Scandinavian attack by an alliance with its 
dukes. His descent on the coast of Normandy 
the year before may, indeed, have quickened Duke 
Richard the Good's wish for the alliance which 
^thelred was now to propose to him. If ^^thel- 



376 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAivviii. Stan's embassy was the first step to a connection 
The between the two countries, and the alhance of 991 
Conquest, the sccond, the marriage treaty of looi was one 
988^16. which brought the two countries fairly together. 
Events had shown that a mere convention such as 
that of 991 could not prevent Norman ports from 
being open and Norman aid given to yEthelred's 
Danish foes. Yet it was of the first importance, if 
the Channel were to be kept clear, that these ports 
should be closed to them. The measure was there- 
fore right in policy;' and in its immediate results 
proved eminently successful, for from the moment 
of Emma's marriage Normandy not only stood apart 
from the Danish attack on its neighbor realm, but 
drifted more and more into an attitude of hostil- 
ity against the Dane. It gave refuge to yEthelred 
when he was driven from his kingdom. It enabled 
him to return and again seize his crown. It shel- 
tered his children from the hatred of Cnut It at 
last plunged into war with the Danish kings for 
their restoration. But the indirect effects of Em- 
ma's marriage were far more momentous than its 
direct effects, both for England and for Normandy. 
In severing the duchy from all connection with its 
Scandinavian kinsmen, as in binding its rulers by 
blood-ties to the English crown, it suddenly opened 
for its rulers a distinct policy, a distinct course of 
action, which led to the Norman conquest of Eng- 
land. From the moment of Emma's marriage Nor- 
mandy became a chief factor in English politics. 

* After the time of Swein's withdrawal, that is, from 997 to 1002, 
the war had really been a Norman war, fed by fleets finding harbor 
in Norman' ports. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



zn 



For the next sixty years we shall have to watch the chap. vm. 
gradual strengthening of the tie which now for the The 
first time bound the two countries directly together. conqUeS;. 
For fifty years to come England saw a Norman lady ggglioie 
as queen or queen-mother wielding power in the — 
land. The "Norman settlement in Enq-land besfan 
with that of her train. With the shelter given to 
^thelred at the Norman court, which was the first 
result of the marriage, as with its secondary issues 
in the protection of his children, their Norman train- 
ing, and the gradual espousal of their claims on the 
English throne by the Norman nobles, began that 
interference of the Norman in the fortunes of Ene- 
land which was at last crowned by the victory of 
Seplac. 

Few of these issues, however, could be foreseen Political 
when yE^thelred, in the spring of 1002, brought 'of 
home the duke's daughter as his wife.' All that the ^"•^"■^^"^• 
king aimed at was to guard against any co-operation 
of Normandy in the coming attack of Swein, and 
that result was secured. But Swein had still to be 
met; and whatever strength yEthelred had gained 
for this struggle by his foreign policy was more than 
compensated by the growing weakness within the 
realm. Since the revolution which followed on the 
death of Byrhtnoth and yEthelwine the number and 
order of the great ealdormen had remained the 
same. At their head had stood the two West- 
Saxon ealdormen, .^thelweard and (in spite of his 
treason and temporary exile) ^Ifric ; then the 
Northumbrian ealdormen, ^Ifhelm and Waltheof ; 
then Leofwine of the Hwiccas, and Leofsige of Es- 

' In Lent, 1002. — Eng. Chron. (Peterborough). 



988-1016. 



278 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. viir. sex. Ulfcytel, though probably ruling at this time 
The in East Anglia, still bore only the title of thegn/ In 

Conquest, 999 vEthelweard seems to have been removed by 
death, and ^Ifric takes his place at the head of the 
ealdormen, but his three fellows remain as before. 
Leofsige was as active as of old; and while ^thel- 
red was negotiating his Norman marriage, the eal- 
dorman of Essex was sent to the pirate fleet to buy 
a truce at a cost of twenty-four thousand pounds." 
But the king was still secretly at feud with his coun- 
sellors ; and in the case of Leofsige, the hostility was 
embittered by the disappointment of the hopes with 
which ^thelred had raised him to his post. Favor- 
ite as he was, no sooner was he made ealdorman 
than his " pride and daring," and the offence he gave 
to the king, equalled those of his fellow -nobles.' 
^thelred took refuge in a fresh expedient by rais- 
ing a new favorite, y^fic, to the post of high reeve,* 
in which we may, perhaps, again see a foreshadow- 
ing of the coming justiciary. But the attempt was 

^ He first signs as minister in 988 (Cod. Dip. 1289), and is never 
found as " dux." 

^ Eng. Chron. a. looi. The old Winchester Chronicle has here 
appended a curious entry of the year, which gives its proceedings 
in greater detail. 

^ " Leofsinum," says ^thelred in a charter (Cod. Dip. 719), " quem 
de satrapis nomine tuli, ad celsioris apicem dignitatis dignum duxi 
promovere, ducem constituendo, scilicet eum unde humiliari magis 
debuerat. . . . Sed ipse hoc oblitus, cernens se in culmine majoris 
status sub rogatu famulari sibi pestilentes spiritus promisit, superbiae 
scilicet et audaciae, quibus nichilominus ipse se dedidit in tantum ut 
floccipenderet quin offensione multimoda me multoties graviter 
offenderet." 

* " Praefectum meum .^ficum, quem primatum inter primatos meos 
taxavi." — Cod. Dip. 719. "The King's High Reeve." — Eng. Chron. 
a. 1002. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^VQ 

roughly met; for Leofsige at once broke into yEfic'scHAP. vm. 
house, and there slew him/ The 

In the general disgust at such a deed of violence, conquest, 
it was easy for ^thelred to win from the Witan a ggsTioie 
sentence of des^radation and banishment ao;ainst ,„~r 
Leofsige ; ' but the outrage had revealed the inner of 
strife within the royal council which was paralyzing 
all effective resistance to the Dane. The military 
measures of resistance were defeated by yEthelred 
himself. The chastisement of the Ostmen and the 
marriage alliance with Normandy had deprived 
Swein of his main sources of help without the 
realm ; while for the defence of England itself 
yEthelred counted on the help of Northmen like 
Pallig, whom he had drawn into his service by 
offers of pay,' and who, like the huscarls that fol- 
lowed them, seem to have been quartered over the 
country throughout southern Britain. But, however 
effective these measures might have been, they were 
frustrated by the king's quick changes of purpose. 
Distrust grew up between the king and the northern 
mercenaries whom he had hired to meet the coming 
invasion. The security which ^thelred felt from 
his connection with Normandy showed itself in a 
haughty indifference to their aid, while in both king 

' " Non cunctatus in propria domo ejus eo inscio perimere." — Cod. 
Dip. 719. 

"^ Eng. Chron. a. 1002. Leofsige 's signature as ealdorman disap- 
pears after the year looi. Cod. Dip. 719, which shows the Witan 's 
part. The charter is of 1012, and shows how the deed rankled in 
yEthelred's mind ten years after. 

^ This employment of hired Danes may have been as much to 
strengthen him against his own ealdormen as against the Northmen 
— an attempt to bring together a standing army. 



380 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP^iii. and people the dread of Swein's invasion broke out 

The in whispers that these strangers were plotting the 

Conquest, murder of the king and his Witan, and the seiz- 

988^16. "^"^ °^ ^^^ land; and in November, 1002, the panic 

spread to ^^thelred himself. An order of the king, 

which was welcomed everywhere, brought about a 

general massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's Day,' 

and those who were not slain by the sword were 

burned in their houses. 

Sweitis The whole plan of defence was thus thrown into 

altack. . . 

confusion, when Swein's fleet reached England in 
the spring of 1003. ^^ steered for Exeter, the dow- 
ry town of Emma, and the surrender of the city by 
Hugh,' a Norman follower of the queen whom she 
had appointed its reeve, at once proclaimed the ruin 
of ^thelred's hopes from his alliance with the Nor- 
mans, while it gave a new character to the war. 
During the previous fifteen years the Danish at- 
tacks had been mere plunder-raids ; but the fall of 
Exeter gave Swein a base of operations from which 
he could advance into the heart of the country. He 
had marched into Wiltshire before any force could 
be gathered to oppose him, but here he was met by 
the fyrd of Wiltshire and Hampshire under the 
command of their own ealdorman, ^Ifric. For the 
last few years ^Ifric had stood at the head of the 
royal counsellors ; but he was now prostrated with 
sickness, and his camp torn with strife which in the 
end left Swein master of the field.' The fyrd, in 

' November 13. — Eng. Chron. a. 1002. 

"^ Eng. Chron. a. 1003. The attack on Exeter looks as if Swein 
came from Normandy, which would explain the betrayal of the city 
by the Norman Hugh. 

' ^Ifric's sickness, which the Chronicle brands as mere treachery, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 38 1 

fact, broke up without fighting, and Swein marched chap. vnr. 
by Wilton and Old Sarum to the sea unhindered.' The 
But the war was now to take a wider range. With conquest, 
the exception of a few raids, it had been limited for „„o~,^ 
fifteen years, from 988 to 1003, to Wessex. But — 
Wessex must now have been harried till little booty 
was left. In the next year, 1004, his fleet appeared 
" unawares " on the coast of East Anglia, seized and 
harried Norwich, a town which had grown up at the 
junction of the Wensum with the Yare, and which 
was now the chief port on the eastern coast. Ulfcy- 
tel, whose name tells of northern blood, was ruler in 
East Anglia ; and though he bore but the title of 
thegn, his position seems to have been one of as 
great independence as that of the earlier ealdormen. 
The Danes knew the land as " Ulfcytel's land ;" and 
now that Swein appeared off the coast, the thegn 
and his Witan made their own treaties and fought 
their own fights as if East Anglia were again a sep- 
arate kingdom. The Witan saw at first no course 
left save to buy off the invaders ; but while the 
truce for this purpose went on, the Danes suddenly 
marched inland and plundered Thetford. Ulfcytel 
summoned the fyrd in haste, and thin as were his 
ranks, the Danes themselves owned that " never 
worse hand-play met they among Englishmen."' 
But the day still went for the Northmen. The 
East-Anglian fyrd broke with the loss of its noblest 

was probably real enough. The strife within the camp had more to 
do with the breakdown of the fyrd than the sickness of the general. 
" Hi anraede naeron." 

* " To the sea again, where he knew that his sea-horses were."^ 
Eng. Chron. a. 1003. 

■■' Eng. Chron. a. 1004. 



382 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. Yvarriors, and no hindrance lay in the way of Swein's 

The march into the heart of Britain. 
Conquest. Again, however, the doom of the country was de- 
988^16. l^yed. We do not know whether dangers at home 
Lu^uai ^^^w Swein from his enterprise, or whether his force 
trotibies. was insufficient for a more serious campaign ; but 
from East Anglia his fleet sailed back again to Den- 
mark, and for a year, at least, the country had a res- 
pite from Danish attack. But it had no respite 
from the more fatal troubles within, ^fic's place 
at court was filled by a new high-reeve, Wulfgeat, 
who probably directed the king's policy in the short 
interval of peace that followed Swein's departure at 
the end of 1004. But only two years later, in 1006, 
the new minister was displaced by a revolution, 
which seems to have been accompanied by deeds of 
violence like those which had accompanied the fall 
of ^fic' The murder of the Deiran ealdorman 
yElfhelm, in the course of this revolution, brought 
about a change of government in the north ; for 
y^thelred saw himself forced to undo the policy of 
Dunstan and Eadgar, to mass together Deira and 
Bernicia into a single earldom, and to place it in the 
hands of Uhtred, whose father, Waltheof, had, as we 
have seen, been Earl of the Bernicians. Uhtred 
showed his strength by a victory which he gained 

■ The Chronicle says : " Wulfgeat was deprived of all his goods, 
Wulfeah and Ufegeat were blinded, and Ealdorman ^Ifhelm (of 
Deira) was slain." This short entry is expanded by Florence, in the 
twelfth century, into an ambush and murder of ^Ifhelm at Shrews- 
bury by Eadric, and a blinding of " his sons," Wulfeah and Ufegeat, 
by -^thelred. The story is legendary in form, evidently looks on 
Eadric as already Ealdorman of Mercia in 1006, a year before his ap- 
pointment, and is of no contemporary value. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



383 



at Durham over the Scot king, Malcolm, who made, chap. vm. 
at this time, an inroad into the north, and y^thelred The 
was glad to bind him to his cause by a marriage conquest, 
with his daughter y^lfgifu/ 988^16 

The fate of JEfic and of Wulfgeat was far from — . 
turnine y^thelred from his ministerial schemes. 
The number of the great ealdormen and their influ- 
ence at court had gone on steadily diminishing. 
The places of those that died do not seem to have 
been commonly filled up ; and after the death of 
yElfhelm, only y^lfric and Leofwine remained to 
sign the royal charters. Uhtred and Ulfcytel exist- 
ed as provincial rulers, but can have hardly swayed 
the policy of a court in which they seldom appear. 
That policy was now y^thelred's own, or rather that 
of a new high-reeve, Eadric, for whom the disgrace 
of Wulfgeat seems to have made room. While later 
tradition charged the new minister, as political fac- 
tion has always charged its opponents, with faith- 
lessness, haughtiness, and pride, it owned his intelli- 
gence and his eloquent tongue. What is most 
notable in the charges brought against him is that 
of low birth. The tendency of the time, as the grow- 
ing feudalism of the Continent proves, lay the other 
way ; but while rulers like the Norman dukes w'ould 
not suffer any but men of noble blood at their court, 

^ Simeon of Durham (Twysden), p. 80. Mr. Freeman seems to 
have rightly consigned the Scot invasion to this year, though Sim- 
eon dates it earher. It may have been connected with JElfhelm's 
murder, which, if we set aside the story in Florence, would seem 
rather to form part of a struggle which had been going on during 
this period between the Deiran and Bernician earls, and which, in 
spite of Waltheof's displacement by the Witan, ended eventually in 
the triumph of the latter. 



384 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.vni. it marked a larger temper in y^thelred when he 
The raised into power this low-born ceorl, solely for his 
Conquest, wise head and skill of speech.' Eadric may thus 
988^16. ti3,ve been the predecessor, not only of the obscure- 
ly-born Godwine before the Conquest, but of the 
new men whom our Norman kings, in spite of their 
nobles, called to the council-board after it. From 
the outset of his administration we feel a firmer 
hand in the management of affairs. Though the 
Danes reappeared on the southern coast, ^thelred 
himself seems to have met them with the land-fyrd ; 
and while avoiding an engagement, to have held 
them in check through the autumn. On their ap- 
parent withdrawal into winter-quarters in the Isle 
of Wight, the king marched westward to Shrews- 
bury, and took post on the Severn, no doubt to 
check the growing turbulence of the Welsh. But 
the pirates no sooner saw the land clear than they 
again made a raid as far inland as Berkshire, light- 
ing their war-beacons as they went, and marching 
along Ashdown as far as the mound of Cuckamsly, 
as though to defy the old proverb, " Men said if they 
sought to Cwichelmslowe — they never to sea should 
gang again."' The fyrd of the shires was hastily 
summoned to cut off their retreat ; but it was easily 
brushed aside, and the pirates carried their booty in 
triumph to their quarters in the Isle of Wight. As 
they were masters of the sea, it was impossible to 
drive them from this stronghold, and in 1007, 

'■ Eadric was known in after-times as " Edricus Streona " (Flor. 
Wore, ed. Thorpe, i. 158), or "acquisitor " (Orderic, Duchesne, Hist. 
Norm. Script, p. 506, B). The nickname evidently alludes to his 
great accumulations of property. 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 1006. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. -3^ 

yEthelred and the Wftan again bought a truce for chap. vm. 
the heavy sum of thirty thousand pounds. The 

But the two years of peace which this tribute cfnTuert. 
purchased were not thrown away as previous breath- ggglioie 
ing-spaces had been. Reversing his poHcy of de- — 
stroying the great ealdormanries, and equally set- of defence. 
ting aside the tradition of intrusting these govern- 
ments to the royal kin, yEthelred now set Eadric as 
ealdorman over Mercia/ or rather over all of it save 
the land of the Hwiccas, whose ealdorman, Leofwine, 
still sat in the royal councils." Eadric was bound, 
like the Northumbrian ealdorman, to the interests 
of the crown by a marriage with one of -^thelred's 
daughters, and it was doubtless to him that the 
active measures of political and military organization 
which distinguish this period were due. A general 
oath of fidelity to the king was now exacted from 
every subject, while a promise of just laws and mild 
government appealed to the loyalty of all. The 
oath of allegiance was, indeed, coupled with the 
same declaration of loyalty to God and the Church. 
But if the hand of Archbishop ./Elfheah ' is seen in 
the injunctions for a better observance of festivals 
and Church dues, and avoidance of " heathenism," * 
the more practical mind of Eadric turned to meas- 
ures of defense. 

* Eng. Chron. a. 1007. • 

* Leofwine still goes on signing charters with his old precedence. 
^ ^Ifheah was translated from Winchester to Canterbury on the 

death of -^Ifric in 1005. — (A. S. G.) 

* "^Icne hsethendom mid ealle aweorpan." — Thorpe, Anc. Laws 
and Inst. i. 313. These ordinances are dated 1008. Mr. Freeman 
refers to about the same time the decrees of the undated council of 
Evesham. — Norm. Conq. i. 335. 

25 



,86 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, vm. An attempt was made to give fresh life to the 

The fyrd system by dividing the country into military 

Conquest, groups, SO that " every eight hides sent a helmet and 

988^16. coat of mail," ' by exacting heavy penalties from 

^,~ ^ all who did not come to the hosting at the king's 

The fyrd *^ '^ 

and the call, and by provisions for a punctual payment of 
the local contributions which were due for the ex- 
penses of forts and bridges, or the defence of the 
land. More effective steps were taken for the re- 
organization of the fleet. Nothing is more remark- 
able throughout yEthelred's reign than the absence 
of any attempt to meet the Danish ships at sea. It 
is clear, whatever the cause may have been, that the 
naval organization of the country had broken down ; 
and it is probable that the small fishing vessels, 
which were all that the English ports could provide, 
were unable to cope with the large war vessels now 
used by the Danes. A special war fleet had, in 
fact, to be created ; and to create such a fleet it was 
necessary to call on the resources of the country at 
large. By the new fleet-law it was provided that 
every three hundred and ten hides should build and 
equip a war-ship, and that the fleet should gather 
round the king once in every year." The law was 
successfully carried out, and in 1009 ^Ethelred saw 
assembled at Sandwich "so many ships as never 
were before among Angle kin in any king's day." 
The -phe gathering, of this fleet is remarkable, not so 
much in our military as in our financial history. 
Up to this time the revenue of the crown had been 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 1008. 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 1008, with Earle's note, pp. 336, 337. Stubbs, 
Const. Hist. i. 124. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 387 

drawn mainly from the rents of its own demesne chap. vm. 
and the royal dues collected in every shire from The 
thegns who held grants of folk-land. The " hoard " ' conquest, 
was made up from other sources of wealth. Here gss^ioie. 
were stored the actual jewels and " ornamenta " of — 
the crown, with such treasures as poured in at the 
death of bishop or earl or thegn. The best horses 
went to the king's stable ; into his armory went 
helmet and coat of mail and spear and sword and 
shield. With them passed into the hoard the two 
pounds of the dead thegn or the two hundred man- 
cuses of the dead earl ; and beside the coin stood 
heriots of price — such silver cups as those of Bishop 
Theodred, the silver vessels of Ealdorman yEthelwold, 
heavy gold rings and gold-hilted swords, costly dishes, 
spears twined with gold, palls of silk, and drinking- 
horns.' There, too, came the costlier chattels for- 
feited by their owner's treason or desertion in war ; 
the " rings and bright gems " of the treasure-trove, 
the " finds " in mound or burial-place, in spite of spells 
and dragon watchers ; the bribe or fee for charter 
or grant, for great offices or bishoprics ; the Jew's 
fine, the widow's marriage dues.' 

^ The "Hoard''' (not yet the "Exchequer"), in Eadward's time, 
was settled at Winchester (" Qui debebant geldum portare ad the- 
saurum regis Wintoniae," Sim. Durh., Hist. Eccl. Dunelm., Twys- 
den, p. 65) ; in Dunstan's day, as we see from the story of Eadred's 
death, it was with the king at Glastonbury or elsewhere. 

^ See instances in Kemble, Sax. in Eng. ii. 99, etc. 

' Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 142) groups royal revenue — 

{a) From land: i. King's private estate, either boc-Iand, or folk- 
land, of which he had taken leases of lives. 2. The demesne of the 
crown, its vills and manors and tuns and boroughs. 3. Rights over 
folk-land, of feorm-fultum and gifts to dependants. " After the reign 
of ^thelred this third class of property seems to have merged in 
the crown dem.esne." — Ibid. 143. 



388 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP, viir, 



But a revenue of this sort was wholly inadequate 
The to meet the new charg^es of a srovernmcnt which had 

Danish ^ ^ 

Conquest. (^^-^ other revenue : i. Proceeds of courts of law, escheats and for- 
988-1016. feitures. 2. Right of maintenance on progress. 3. Wreck and treas- 
— ure-trove. 4. Mines and salt-works. 5. Tolls, market-dues, and 
land-tax P<^^t-dues. 6. Heriots and other semi-feudal payments. 

Of these, the first division contributed little to the hoard. The 
payments from private or public lands of the crown were almost 
wholly in kind. Till the time of Henry I. the tenants on royal de- 
mesne paid their dues in kind. Feorm-fultum was not commuted 
into a money-payment till after the Conquest. It is hard to esti- 
mate the revenue drawn from the demesnes of the crown, from the 
boroughs in demesne, from lands falling in by escheat, whether 
through treason and confiscation or through death without heirs, 
from the justice-dues of courts — whether royal or hundred-courts — 
in the royal demesne which the king held as land-owner, from ship- 
money, from fultum, wrecks, etc., market-tolls and port-dues, salt- 
dues, mines, treasure-trove, compositions for military service. See 
Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 88, 117, 143. But, clearly, all these made a 
much larger sum than we commonly think of as the royal revenue 
of the time. See Freeman, Norm. Conq. v. 437-441, 471. 

Feorm-fultum, the tax for the king's sustentation as he went 
through his realm, was, in fact, a tax for the " civil service," as the 
whole machinery of government and administration passed with 
him over the country. The composition for it varied greatly. As 
it arose from what had been the folk-land, this may vary with the 
shire. Thus Oxfordshire paid feorm of three nights or_^i5o; War- 
wick, _£65 and thirty-six sextaries of honey ; Northamptonshire, feorm 
of three nights ; Dorset paid feorm of seven days and nights (cf. 
Ellis, Introd. to Dom. i. 261, 262, who adduces others). The king's 
demesne — exempt from Danegeld — paid the feorm. In Dorset the 
royal manors were grouped for this purpose : three such groups pay 
each "firma unius noctis ;" two, "dimidia firma unius noctis ;" one 
paid in refined coin — " hoc manerium cum suis pertinentibus reddit 
45 libras albas." One sees here a minute and well-organized ma- 
chinery of finance. 

Thus, under ^thelred, the scheme of taxation stands thus : The 
royal demesnes, including the towns, bear the cost of the civil ser- 
vice, so far as it had yet been concentrated round the crown. The 
cost of the military services was borne directly by the thegns, who 
contributed personal service, and whose demesne lands were in re- 
turn exempted from geld ; and indirectly by the general land, which 
was assessed on a scheme of hideage or proportionate value. " Ship- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



389 



become national, or the cost of national defence. The chap, vm. 
ship-levy and the Danegeld were the first beginnings The 
of a national taxation." They were, in fact, the first con(JIest. 
forms of that land-tax which constituted the most ggglioie 
important element in the national revenue from the — 
days of ^thelred to the days of the Georges. As 
a national tax levied by the Witan of all England, 
and passing into the hands of the king of all Eng- 
land, this, tax practically brought home the national 
idea as it had never been brought home before. Its 
levy, too, must have necessitated the preliminary 
steps of a national survey, and of some record of 
that survey like the later Domesday book, in which, 
as it would seem, the hide was taken no longer as a 
local measure, but as a measure of value. The levy, 
again, of these taxes could only have been made by 
the royal reeve in each shire, whose post was thus 
raised to a higher importance, while their payment 
into the royal hoard implies that some such admin- 
istrative machinery as the later exchequer for the 
due receipt and acquittal of these sums was already 
in existence, though unnoticed by our chroniclers. 

It is thus that our financial system traces itself ^^^'^/'^ 

•' render 

back to the days of ^thelred. But its organization, Timridii. 
like the attempt to re-organize the system of na- 
tional defence, came too late. The country w^as 
cowed. During the past twenty years every shire 
in Wessex had been harried again and again, and if 

money" may have been a branch of this land-tax. The later Hus- 
carl-tax of Cnut looks like a diversion of the " feorm-fultum " of the 
boroughs on which it fell to military services. 

' " It may be questioned whether any money taxation, properly so 
called, ever existed before the imposition of the Danegeld by ^thel- 
red." — Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 123. 



290 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. the rest of England had, as yet, been spared, the pi- 
The rates had at any rate once carried their ravages over 
Conquest. East Anglia. So utterly had the fyrd system broken 
988J016 down that in the past year, when the Witan of Wes- 
— sex was gathered together to repel the Danes, none 
could bethink them how " to drive out " the stran- 
gers, and, as we have seen, a truce was purchased with 
hard cash. The attempt to command the sea broke 
down at the first trial of the new fleet. A detach- 
ment of eighty ships sent to clear the coast of Sus- 
sex of an English pirate * who was harrying it was 
dashed to pieces by a storm ; and when the news 
reached the main force under the king' the panic 
was so great that on the withdrawal of ^thelred 
the fleet went round to London and broke up. The 
ships had hardly gone home when a Danish squad- 
ron appeared in the Thames, ravaging Kent, harry- 
ing the Thames valley as far as Oxford, and burn- 
ing that city. The leader of this force was Thurkill, 
a son of Strut-Harald, the Jarl of Zeeland, and per- 
haps his father's successor in this jarldom, while his 
brother, Sigwald, was jarl at Jomsborg. Both had 
joined in the vow at Harald's funeral feast; but 
while the bulk of the Jomsborgers fell in the fight 
with Jarl Hakon, the two brothers returned un- 
harmed to Denmark ; and it was to Thurkill that 
Swein intrusted forty ships with some three thou- 
sand men to carry on the attack on England. Small 
as the force was, the measures taken to meet it 

» A charge brought against this " Child Wulfnoth, the South Sax- 
on," by Eadric's brother, Byrhtnoth, and the flight of Wulfnoth with 
his ships, show the strife that was still going on between the nobles 
and the "new men" about the king. — Eng. Chron. a. 1009. 

^ The Chronicle says, " It was as though all were redeless." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^QI 

proved utterly ineffective. Even when his fyrdc"AP.viii. 
fronted the Danes, Eadric hindered it from engag- The 
ing,' and the wisdom of his caution was shown in craquest. 
the next year, loio, when Thurkill's force sailed ggglioie 
round to East Anglia, and after a stout fight with — • 
Ulfcytel utterly defeated its fyrd. After harrying 
East Anglia for three months, and ravaging the 
whole country to the " wild fens," Thurkill returned 
to the mouth of the Thames ; but in a second raid 
suddenly swept westward into Oxfordshire and 
Buckinghamshire, and thence along the Ouse to 
Bedford ; a third took the pirates inland as far as 
Northampton, where they had burned the town and 
harried the land before the close of November ; and 
thence passed over the Thames again to plunder 
Wessex and Wiltshire before returning at midwinter 
to their ships. 

The rapidity of the Danish movements still, as of -^l^^^Jf 
old, bafifled resistance, " When they were east, then 
held men the fyrd west, and when they were at the 
south, then was our fyrd northwards." The Witan 
again gathered round ^thelred, and devised how to 
guard the land. But " though they devised some- 
what, that stood not so much as a month." The 
want of national unity could not be remedied by 
laws, and what most helped Thurkill was the growth 
of provincial isolation. All national organization 
seemed to have broken down." Eadric himself fell 

^ The Chronicle says, " Ealdorman Eadric hindered it, as he ever 
did," but mentions no other instance. Florence, of course, greatly 
expands this entry. 

* " At last there was no leader that would gather forces, but each 
fled as he best might ; nor, at the last, would shire help shire." — 
Eng. Chron. a. loio. 



392 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, viii. back into his own " Myrcenarlce," or Mercian realm. 
The as it is still significantly called/ which had remained 

Conquest, till this last raid of Thurkill's untouched by the pi- 

988^16. rates ; and when a fresh withdrawal of the Danes 
was purchased by a promise of a yet larger tribute,, 
he seized the moment to secure his own western 
frontier against the Welsh, whose attacks must have 
been roused by the raids of the pirates, and carried 
his ravages along the whole Welsh coast as far as 
St. David's. But while he was busy with the Welsh 
^thelred had failed to pay the tribute, and Thurkill 
again swooped upon Canterbury, sacked the town, 
and seized Archbishop ^Ifheah as a hostage for its 
payment.' Fresh promises were made, and in the 
spring of 1012 the Witan again met to provide the 
sum. An outbreak of drunken wrath, indeed, de- 
prived the Danes of their hostage, for on his refusal 
to redeem himself, ^^Ifheah was pelted by the 
drunken warriors with stones and ox-horns till one 
more pitiful clave his head with an axe. In spite, 
however, of this brutal deed the great tribute was 
paid, and the Danish fleet at last sailed away from 
the English coast. 

^fSwSi. Their leader, Thurkill, however, remained with 
forty-five ships as a mercenary in English pay.' The 
humiliation, indeed, to which the realm had stooped 
in the payment of the great tribute had been forced 
on it by more than its terror of Thurkill's force, for 
it must have been known now that a far more ter- 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 1007. = Ibid, a. ion. 

^ Ibid. a. 1012. The Encomium Emmae (Langebek), ii. 475, repre- 
sents the desertion of Thurkill and his detention of Swein's ships as 
a cause of Swein's after-attack. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^93 

rible attack under Swein himself was preparing incHAP.vm. 
the north. In July, 1013, Swein appeared off the The 
coast, and after landing at Sandwich suddenly en- conquest, 
tered the Humber. The size and number of his gggr^oig 
ships, the splendor of their equipment, the towers on — 
their forecastles, the lions, eagles, and dragons of 
gold and silver which glittered on their topmasts, 
their brazen beaks, the colors that decked their keels,' 
showed that his aim was no mere plunder-raid. The 
time had, in fact, come for the conquest of England. 
Wessex, spent with the long strife, lay helpless and 
inactive, while Swein called on the Danelaw to finish 
the work which had been so long held in check by 
the vigor of the house of Alfred. But even y^lfred 
or Eadward would have failed to check it had it 
been backed, as now, by the armed force of Denmark 
itself. All was, in fact, over when the presence of 
Earl Uhtred with his Northumbrians in Swein's 
camp announced that the Danelaw had risen. The 
fiction of a single England, of an English empire 
throughout Britain, which the clerks of Winchester 
had dressed up in the pompous titles of their char- 
ters, disappeared like a dream. The great ealdor- 
men again showed themselves in their true light 
as disintegrating forces. The Northumbrian earl 
joined Swein as an independent power. The East- 
Anglian ealdorman followed his example. The Lind- 
sey folk and the Five Boroughs, all England north 
of Watling Street, submitted to him at Gainsbor- 
ough, and hostages were delivered to him from every 
shire. Eadric seems to have withdrawn into his 
own Mercian ealdormanry along the Severn, and to 

^ Encom. Emmae (Langebek), ii. 476. 



988-1016. 



294 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. have stood apart from the struggle. From Em- 
The peror and Lord of Britain, ^thelred sav/ himself 

Conquest, shrink at the hard touch of reality into a King of 
Wessex, and of a Wessex helpless before the junction 
of the rest of Britain with a foreign foe. 

Sfheir/d Resistance was, in fact, impossible. Master, with- 
out a blow, of northern and midland Britain, Swein 
horsed his host, and gathering the fyrd of the shires 
which adhered to him, marched southward. " After 
they came over Watling Street they wrought the 
most evil that any host might do." ' By Oxford he 
passed into the heart of Wessex, where Winchester 
submitted to his arms. From Winchester he turned 
upon London, into which y^thelred and Thurkill 
had thrown themselves. But the town made a vig- 
orous defence, and Swein was forced to fall back to 
Wallingford for a passage over the Thames to Bath, 
to complete his work by the reduction of Wessex. 
The submission of Winchester had carried with it 
that of the Central Provinces, whose ealdorman, 
^Ifric, still clung to the court. But the Western 
Provinces, the Wessex beyond Selwood,where Alfred 
had rallied his men at the last moment of the fight 
with Guthrum, remained unconquered under ^^thel- 
mser, who a few years back had succeeded ^thel- 
weard as ealdorman." But even in this heart of 
West -Saxon life provincial was stronger than na- 
tional feeling. At Bath, Swein was met by ^thel- 
maer and the western thegns ; and their submis- 
sion left him lord of all England. London itself, left 
alone in its resistance, sent hostaares to the Danish 

' Eng. Chron. a. 1013. 

^ Ibid. a. 1013. -^thehveard disappears from the charters in 999. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^g^ 

king, while ^thelred, after sending Enama and her chaivvhi. 
two boys to their uncle, Duke Richard, took refuge The 
in Thurkill 's squadron, and, after hovering through conquest, 
the early winter off the coast, sailed in despair at ggglloie. 
Christmas-tide to join them in Normandy. —r 

With the flight of the king ended the long effort ^-'^ ^^"'^^'^ 
of Wessex to maintain her supremacy over Britain. 
It had, indeed, other issues little foreseen at the mo- 
ment, for it was the Norman influences which from 
this time surrounded the English royal house that 
prepared the way for the presence of the Norman 
in England itself, ^thelred's two boys were from 
this time dwellers, not on English, but on Norman 
soil. From childhood to manhood they grew up as 
Normans among their Norman kinsfolk. Alfred, 
the elder of them, was to return to England with 
Norman soldiers to claim his father's realm, to per- 
ish on the ground he claimed, and to leave a heritage 
of revenge among the Normans against Englishmen 
which only slaked itself in the bloodshed of Senlac. 
The fortunes of his brother Eadward were destined 
to be yet more fatal to England. Bred and shel- 
tered in the Norman land till its temper and lan- 
guage became his own, he came as a Norman to the 
English throne, and the reign of the Normanized 
Confessor brought with it as an inevitable necessity 
the Norman conquest of England. 

Had yEthelred delayed his flight but for a month ^^«//' €/" 
the scene would suddenly have changed. At the 
opening of February, 1014, Swein died suddenly at 
Gainsborough, and his death at once broke the spell 
of terror which had fallen on the land. The Witan 
gathered to send letters over sea to ^thelred, bid- 



396 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.' 

CHAP. VI 11. ding him know that " no lord was more dear to them 
The than their own lord, if he would hold them in right- 
conquest. lier wise than he did aforetime." The terms were 
988^10. accepted, y^thelred sent Eadmund with pledges 
that he would be a faithful lord to them and amend 
all they hated ; " they then established full friendship 
by word and pledge on either half, and declared ev- 
ery Danish king an outlaw from England forever." 
Leaving Emma and her two children at Richard's 
court, the king at once put to sea, to receive a joy- 
ous welcome in London, and, hastily gathering 
troops, marched upon Gainsborough, where the Dan- 
ish host had chosen Cnut, Swein s young son, for 
king. Cnut was, in fact, already bargaining with 
the men of Lindsey for aid in a joint raid on the 
south, but before yEthelred's vigorous attack he for- 
sook Britain and sailed away to his northern home. 
Cnufs j|- jYiay be doubted, indeed, whether his return to 
the north was due as much to the attack of y^thel- 
red as to the news that another son of Swein, Har- 
ald, had already mounted the Danish throne. It is 
said that an arrangement was made between the 
brothers by the wisdom of Thurkill, who proposed 
that Harald should rule in Denmark while Cnut re- 
turned to conquer England. However this may 
have been, it is certain Thurkill quitted yEthelred 
— it may be this was in itself a part of the bargain 
between the king and his subjects — and in the com- 
ing struggle fought side by side with his own north- 
ern folk. Cnut's ambition can have needed little 
urging to the winning of a land twice the size of his 
own Denmark, and vastly greater in wealth and 
population. His vigor showed itself in the rapidity 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



397 



with which a fleet even more numerous and splen-cHAP.viu. 
did than his father's gathered, in ioi5,for a fresh The 
attack on Britain. Fortune already favored his conquest, 
cause. The loss of Thurkill's military force was „„rT:,„ 

1 . -' . . 888-1016. 

not made up by national vigor. The union which - — 
had been sealed by solemn pact between y^thelred 
and his Witan was already at an end ; the English 
court was again torn with strife; and though the 
king himself, who was drawing fast to the death 
which followed in the coming year, could take little 
part in the struggle, the fight he had fought against 
the great nobles was taken up fiercely by his son. 
The contest between Eadmund and Ealdorman Ead- 
ric proved more fatal to England than any of its 
predecessors. Of the origin or real nature of the 
quarrel we know nothing, but Eadmund seems to have 
revolted against the power which Eadric exercised 
over the king. Its first outbreak was at the Wite- 
nagemot at Oxford, where Eadric is said to have 
drawn two " chief thegns of the Seven Boroughs " 
into his chamber and to have slain them. The 
thegns may have been supporters of Eadmund, for 
after a short while Eadmund, against his father's 
will, took the widow of one of them to wife, seized 
their lands, and made himself head of their people.' 

The quarrel had just broken out when Cnut ap- Dissen- 
peared ravaging the Wessex coast, and its results at England. 
once showed themselves in the old fatal discord in 
the face of the national enemy. The host gathered 
to meet Cnut under Eadric, but no sooner had Ead- 

^ Eng. Chron. a. 1015. As these lands were in Eadric's ealdorman- 
ry, this may have been an effort to break up the ealdorman's power 
at home ; but we have no means of deciding the matter. 



988-1016. 



398 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. VIII. mund joined it with forces from the North than 
The charges of treachery parted the two leaders, and the 

conctuest. EngHsh army broke up without any fight. A yet 
more fatal issue followed, i^thelred must now 
have been dying, and Eadric, conscious that his 
death would leave him in the hands of a king who 
was his avowed enemy, saw no resource save one. 
He joined Cnut with forty ships, and the balance of 
the war turned at once in favor of the Dane. The 
men of Wessex submitted to him, and with the 
opening of the year 1016 his host advanced across 
the Thames, ravaging at its will. It was in vain 
that Eadmund gathered forces to oppose Cnut and 
Eadric, for the army was no sooner assembled than 
it refused to march without the king; and when 
.^thelred joined his son, and a more stringent sum- 
mons called men to the royal standard, the gen- 
eral distrust still paralyzed action. " It was made 
known to the king that men would betray him ;" 
and Y^thelred sailed again in terror to London, 
while his son fell back on Northumbria and sought 
aid from his brother-in-law. Earl Uhtred. Their 
joint army, however, broke up as soon as Cnut, who 
had been wasting eastern Mercia unopposed, ad- 
vanced by Lincoln upon York, and while Uhtred 
and the Northumbrians submitted to the conqueror, 
Eadmund fled to join his father in London. 

Eadmund It was at this momcut that London first took the 

XvoTistdc* 

leading part in English history which it has main- 
tained ever since. The city stood alone in its loy- 
alty to the house of Cerdic, for almost all England, 
from the Channel to the Forth, had now bowed to 
the Dane. But the spirit of its burghers remained 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



399 



unbroken. As Cnut and Eadric advanced from the chap. vm. 
north to complete their work by a siege of the town, The 
^theh-ed died within its walls in April, 1016; but conquest, 
Eadmund was at once chosen king by those of the ggsTioie 
Witan who remained with him and by the London- — 
ers. Once crowned, he showed a temper worthy of 
his line. Quitting London before its investment, he 
hurried into Somerset and Devon, the only shires 
that still clung to him, where his presence roused 
part at least of the West Saxons from their apathy, 
and again returned with a small force to the relief 
of the town, which, though girt by a great trench 
and repeatedly attacked, held its assailants stoutly 
at bay. The news of his advance forced Cnut to 
leave the besieging army round London, and to 
march with an English host under Eadric and two 
other ealdormen to meet the king. Two indecisive 
engagements on the borders of Wiltshire were fol- 
lowed by the withdrawal of both the fighting forces ; 
but, rapidly gathering a greater host, Eadmund took 
advantage of the opening left by Cnut's retreat, 
and, striking along the north bank of the Thames, 
succeeded in his aim. London was relieved, and 
the besiegers were driven to their ships and beaten 
in a sally at Brentford. The relief, indeed, was only 
for a moment; Eadmund retreated again to the 
west, and Cnut drew his levies again round about 
London. But his renewed attack was as unsuccess- 
ful as his old ; and the Danish host were at last 
forced by want of supplies to break up the siege. 

The failure gave fresh strength and hope to Ead- Assandun. 
mund. While Cnut ravaged in Mercia and coasted 
back with less spirit to the Medway, the young king 



400 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. viir. again advanced with his forces from the west, broke 
The up the Danish quarters in Kent, and drove their 
Conquest, ^ost into the Isle of Sheppey. The change of fort- 
988^16 ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ Eadric 's change of attitude. From 
— the hour of strife after Eadmund's marriage Ead- 
ric had stood firmly by the Danes. But with the 
progress of the struggle, and the development of the 
king's noble qualities, the family ties which bound 
Eadric to his royal brother-in-law regained their 
power. It may be, too, that Eadric already discerned 
Cnut's jealousy of his influence, and that he was 
shaken by the murder of his brother-in-law, Uhtred 
of Northumbria, who had been slain after his sub- 
mission, and his earldom given to Eric the Norwe- 
gian. Whatever was the ground of his resolve, king 
and ealdorman now met at Aylesford, and Eadric 
forsook Cnut to resume his place beside Eadmund 
Ironside, as he was now called for his " snell schipe." 
The accession of strength which his junction gave 
Eadmund spurred the king to a decisive struggle. 
His force, indeed, had now swelled from the " fyrd " 
of a couple of shires, such as fought at Pen and 
Sherstone, to a national host; for Eadric brought 
him the Mercians even to the Magesaetas of Here- 
fordshire, while Ulfcytel had joined him with the 
East Anglians, who had already exchanged such 
hard blows with the Danes at Maldon. Eadmund 
marched resolutely on Cnut's army, which had 
crossed the Thames and was slowly withdrawing 
through Essex. He forced it to engage at Assan- 
dun, on a swampy field along the Crouch. The 
fight was a stubborn one; the sun set on the still 
struggling hosts, but the day went against the Eng- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^qi 

lish army. Its loss was terrible. The two chiefs chap. vm. 
of East Anglia, Ulfcytel and ^thelweard, the son The 
of ^.thelwine, lay amidst a host of dead. " All the c?n,ruest. 
English nobles were slain," says the chronicler. The ggglioie 
old jealousies and suspicions, indeed, raged even on — ■ 
the battle-field. The reconciliation with Eadric had 
been sullenly submitted to by Eadmund's West- 
Saxon followers, and their ill-will broke out in a 
charge that Eadric and his men were the first to fly 
from the field of Assandun. But in spite of these 
charges of treason, it was Eadric who was now Ead- 
mund's only hope. The king fell back with the 
ealdorman on the Severn, pursued by Cnut as soon 
as he learned the line of his retreat, and it was by 
Eadric's interposition that further conflict was 
averted. Pledges and oaths were given by the two 
rivals to each other in the Isle of Olney in the 
Severn by Deerhurst, and the realm was divided be- 
tween the English and the Danish leaders as in 
/Elfred's day, Wessex and the English Mercia re- 
maining to Eadmund.' But the strain and failure 
of his seven months' reign proved fatal to the young 
king. He shared, no doubt, the weak constitution 
of his race, and at the close of November his body 
was borne to Glastonbury to lie beside his grand- 
father Eadgar. 

^ The Encomium and Florence of Worcester make Cnut fall back 
on London ; and Henry of Huntingdon says, " Lundoniarp et scep- 
tra cepit regalia," p. 185 (ed. Arnold). 

26 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE REIGN OF CNUT. 

1016-1035. 

The rule WiTH the death of Eadmund the whole aspect of 
English affairs suddenly changed. The land which 
had seemed under yEthelred but a bundle of isolated 
shires, and whose fortunes had been the sport of 
warring ealdormen, became a great and tranquil 
nation, owning from end to end the supremacy of 
the crown. The secret of the change lay in more 
than the exhaustion and the passion for rest which 
always follow a period of weary strife; it was that 
the country now found itself in the hands of a great 
ruler. Cnut was still in the first flush of youth, for 
he was but twenty-two when the death of his rival 
left him unchallenged king of all England, and his 
temper, so far as it had yet been seen, promised 
little more than a brutal conqueror. Quick in 
seizing the decisive point of attack in his siege of 
London, and stubborn in holding it, he had proved 
himself, indeed, a born general, as great on the battle- 
field as in the plan of his campaign. But the skill 
and bravery of the Northman seemed linked in him 
to the Northman's ruthlessness. Men remembered 
the pitiless cruelty which was so long to sully his 
greatness, when three years before, in his retreat 
from Gainsborough, he had mutilated and set ashore 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. mo- 

tile hostages whom Swein had taken to secure the chap. ix. 
loyalty of Englishmen. And in the first months The 
of his rule the same stern temper was shown in the ^c?ut°* 
measures by which his authority was secured. jQieToss 
Policy, indeed, had its share with cruelty in the — 
blood-shedding with which the reign opened. The 
new king's hand fell heavily on the great nobles 
whose strife had been the weakness of the crown. 
The two ealdormen of East Anglia lay dead at As- 
sandun. The sons-in-law of ^thelred who held 
north and middle England in their hands met a 
like fate ; for a murder rid Cnut of Uhtred, the Eal- 
dorman of Northumbria, while Eadric of Mercia, 
whom the division of the realm had left all power- 
ful, was summoned to the court at Eadmund's death, 
and fell by an axe-blow at the king's signal. Before 
the year was out, three other nobles of dangerous 
rank and position had been condemned and slain at 
London. 

England, indeed, lay crushed and helpless under ^" 
the rule of its foreign master; for if Mercia was 
placed after Eadric's death in the hands of the Eng- 
lish ealdorman Leofwine, Northumbria was given 
to the Norwegian Eric, and East Anglia to the Dane 
Thurkill, while Wessex was held by the conqueror 
himself. Nor was Cnut less ruthless in the steps 
by which he secured his throne against the House 
of Cerdic. Murder removed a brother of Eadmund 
Ironside, while Eadmund's children were hunted 
into Hungary by his pitiless hate. But the removal 
of these rivals still left Cnut uneasy on his throne. 
yEthelred's two sons by his marriage with Emma, 
.Alfred and Eadward, had remained with their 



404 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. mother at the court of Rouen ; and Richard the 
The Good, hampered though he was with border wars, 

^cnut.°^ was too dangerous a foe to neglect. The young 

1016^35 Normans who, weary of peace and order, were just 
■ — now following Roger de Toesny to Spain for a blow 
at the Moslem, would as soon have followed him to 
England to strike a blow for their duke's nephews. 
But Cnut matched the marriage policy of y^thelred 
wath a marriage policy of his own. Young as he 
was, he was, perhaps, already father by an earlier 
wife of two children, Swein and Harald ; but these 
with their mother were set aside, and the king 
sought for wife yEthelred's widow and the mother 
of his only rivals, Emma herself. Emma was ten 
vears older than her new wooer, but her consent 
seems to have been quickly given, and her brother, 
the Norman duke, would naturally see in this new 
alliance the advantage he had seen in the old. 
The With the murder of Eadric and the marriage of 

Conquest. Emma all danger of a disputed throne was at an 
end ; and with the passing away of his dread, the 
nobler and grander features of Cnut's temper were 
to develop themselves. The conqueror rose sud- 
denly into a wise and temperate king. In nothing 
did his greatness show itself more clearly than in 
his anxiety to obliterate from men's minds the for- 
eign character of his rule. At first sight, indeed, 
his triumph appeared to be a crowning of the long 
effort which the Northmen had been making for 
two hundred years to win Britain for their own ; for 
in spite of yE^lfred's struggle and of the victories of 
his sons, it seemed as though a Danish conquest 
and the rule of a Danish king had won the land for 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 405 

the Dane. It would be hard to overrate the results chap, ix. 
of such a winning. England would have been torn The 
from all union with western Christendom ; it would cnut.° 
have sunk into one of the Scandinavian realms ; ^Qj^Ij^gg 
and its fortunes would have been linked with those — 
of northern Europe. Nor would the results of such 
a change have been simply political ; for the country 
would have been cut off from the enlightenment 
and civilization which its actual relations with the 
west were slowly introducing, while Scandinavia, 
whose lands were even now hardly emerging from 
barbarism, had no new element of progress to offer. 
But what might have been possible a hundred years 
before was impossible now. The success of the 
Dane had, in fact, come too late. Had Alfred 
failed to arrest Guthrum's conquest our whole his- 
tory might have changed. In spite of its union 
under Ecgberht, England was then but a mass of 
isolated kingdoms without national consciousness or 
national cohesion. Once at the Northman's feet, 
there was little to prevent it from becoming a North- 
man's land, like its own Danelaw or like the Nor- 
mandy at the mouth of Seine, a land where the bulk 
of the ruling class would have been Scandinavians, 
and whose local position would have made possible, 
what local position made impossible for Normandy, 
that it should be linked politically with the Scandi- 
navian realm. But what might have been in Ai\- 
fred's day could no longer be now. The work of a 
hundred years had made the country a single Eng- 
land. The long war had kindled a national con- 
sciousness, and had brought about a national union, 
which no defeat could undo. The victories and the 



4o6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. greatness of the house of ^^Ifred had begotten a 
The pride in the Enghsh name, while the peace and 
CnuJ prosperity of reigns hke those of yEthelstan or Ead- 
ioie^35 §^^ ^^^ raised the land to a new wealth, a new in- 
dustrial energy. Political feuds might lay such a 
land at the feet of a Scandinavian ruler, but it was 
impossible that it could henceforth live a merely 
Scandinavian life. 
Its The conditions, too, under which a nation loses 

character. ... 

its older identity were no longer present. The 
social and political traditions of the English people 
were henceforth in no danger of being merged and 
lost in the customs of its conquerors. Had the 
pirates won a hundred years back, their settlement 
in England would have been an element of the first 
importance in determining its political character. 
The earlier Danish conquerors were colonists as 
well as conquerors, and settlers in the lands they 
won. But the old period of dispersion, of wander- 
ing, of colonization, was over for the Scandinavian 
peoples. Their revolutions at home had built up 
the petty realms of the North into great monarchies, 
whose military force had been shown in the con- 
quest of England. But with these revolutions the 
migration and settlement of the sea-rovers had 
ceased. The colonists of the Danelaw had been 
fairly absorbed in the English people, and Cnut's 
conquest brought no new settlers. Guthrum was 
the head of a host which settled on the soil which 
Guthrum won. Cnut was the general of an army 
which sailed back again homewards when its war 
work was done. 
Its results, xhc rcsult of the Danish conquest was, in fact, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 407 

the very reverse of what it seemed destined to be. chap, ix. 
It was not Scandinavia that drew England to it, it The 
was England that was brought to wield a new in- cnut° 
fluence over Scandinavia. The North was gov-jQi^gg 
erned by orders from Winchester. Cnut's northern 
realms sank into under-kingdoms, ruled by under- 
kings ; Denmark by one of his young sons, Norway 
in later days by another. It was with English 
troops that Cnut sailed at long intervals to repress 
revolt in the northern seas, to fight the Wends, to 
annex Norway to his Danish realm. It was by de- 
spatching English bishops and English preachers to 
the north that he pushed on the work of its civili- 
zation and its conversion to Christianity. The 
Danes who remained with the king in England 
held only subordinate offices. Even those whom 
he had rewarded with high rank in the first flush of 
victory were gradually set aside for men of English 
blood. Thurkill was driven from the land only four 
years after he had entered on his earldom of East 
Anglia ; ' Cnut's nephew, Hakon, was sent to rule in 
Norway ; "" while of his two brothers-in-law, one, Earl 
Ulf, quitted England to bear rule in Denmark," and 
a second, Earl Eric, was stripped of his power in 
Northumbria and banished from the realm.* 

Cnut was himself the most prominent sign of the T/ie poiky 
influence of England on its Danish conquerors. 
With the instinct of genius, the young king from al- 
most the first moment of his reign cast off the Dane 

' In 102 1. Eng. Chron.— (A. S. G.) = In 1029.— (A. S. G.) 

^ Probably in 1019. — (A. S. G.) 

* The last charter signed by Eric is in 1023. Cod. Dip. 1239. — 
(A. S. G.) 



4o8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

ciiAP^ix. to stand before his people as an English ruler. 
The Fresh from the bloodshed of Assandun, fresh from 
cnut° the brutal murders which secured his throne, Cnut 

1016^35 threw himself on the loyalty of his English subjects. 
Of the fleet and host which had brought England 
to his feet, he kept but forty ships and a few thou- 
sands of huscarls, a paid bodyguard which was 
strong enough to check isolated disaffection, but 
helpless against a national revolt. By the summons 
of the bishops, ealdormen, and thegns to a great as- 
sembly on Eadmund's death, he showed that his au- 
thority was henceforth to rest, not on force of arms, 
but on law and custom. The solemn choice and 
crowning of Cnut at London stamped him in the 
eyes of the people at large as an English king rather 
than a foreign master; while his formal renewal of 
Eadgar's laws in a Witenagemot at Oxford marked 
his resolve to rule in English fashion. How com- 
pletel}^ indeed, he had already identified himself with 
his new English realm, we see from his relations 
with his Danish kingdom.' If he visited it during 
the winter of 1019-20, it was but to make such ar- 
rangements as left Denmark practically a sub-king- 
dom, whose interests were subordinated to those of 
England. Jarl Ulf, who was bound to the throne 
by his marriage with the king's sister Estrith,' was 
placed as governor over Cnut's hereditary kingdom, 
which, henceforth, saw itself ruled by orders from a 
king transformed from a Dane into an Englishman, 

' Denmark probably passed to Cnut little more than a year after 
his coronation as king of the English if his brother Harald died 
about 1018. Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark, i. 105. — (A. S. G.) 

^ This cannot have been later than 1019, as the age of Swein Es- 
trithson shows. Dahlmann, Gesch. v. Dannemark. — (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 409 

and reigning at Winchester. With the early spring chap. ix. 
Cnut was back in England, and, save for this and The 
perhaps one other brief absence, the first eight years cnut.° 
of his reign seem to have been spent in the settle- jqj^35 
ment of English affairs. — 

The pledge he srave at the outset of his reio^n that His gov- 

€T1l7}l€Ht, 

he would rule after Eadgar's law, that he would be 
true — in modern phrase — to the traditional consti- 
tution and usages of the realm, was religiously ob- 
served. The laws he enacted later followed those 
of his predecessors. The structure of government, 
the control of the Witan, the rule of ealdorman and 
bishop, the jurisdiction of shire-moot and hundred- 
moot and town -moot, remained unchanged. The 
royal progresses were diligently carried on, when 
the king, with his following of counsellors and 
scribes, administered justice and redressed wrong 
as Eadgar and Alfred had done before him. The 
old organization of the country, too, was gradually 
restored, and the more galling marks of foreign rule 
done away. Englishmen were set over the great 
earldoms ; and even the traditional connections of 
the rulino: houses were resoected. The new Earl of 

O J. 

Mercia, Leofvvine, had before been ealdorman of the 
Mercian district of the Hwiccas, and was succeeded 
in this post by his son Leofric ; and when Eric, the 
Norwegian, was driven into exile, Eadwulf, a brother 
of the murdered ealdorman Uhtred, was suffered to 
hold the hereditary possession of his house as Earl 
of Northumbria. W^essex remained for a time the 
special district of the king. But when, in 1020, pos- 
sibly as a result of the addition of the Danish mon- 
archy to his English realm, and the administrative 



4IO THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. difficulties which this brought about, Cnut formed it 
The into an earldom, it was the English Godwine whom 

^cS.°^ he chose for its ruler. 

1016^35 From the outset of his reign the king had shown 
^ — ■. favor to Godwine, a thegn of West-Saxon blood, but 
tvtne. ^i^^gg parentage and rank are utterly unknown. 
The tradition of a humble origin, and his position 
at the court, show that Cnut was imitating ^thel- 
red's policy in raising " new men " to high place in 
the royal councils. But whatever may have been 
his early rank, the ability Godwine showed both in 
the field and at the council-board, his eloquence, his 
pleasant and ready temper, and his laborious indus- 
try, were soon rewarded with the hand of Gytha, the 
sister of Jarl Ulf, who was himself wedded to the sis- 
ter of Cnut. Such an alliance brought the new fa- 
vorite near to the throne itself ; but it was the prel- 
ude to yet greater honors. From 1020 he became 
the chief councillor of the king; he held an impor- 
tant office as 2;overnor of the realm in Cnut's absence 
during the wars in the north, and he probably pos- 
sessed the earldom of Wessex, with which we find 
him invested at Cnut's death. By that time, as his 
signatures show, he ranked first among the English 
nobles, and before even the kinsmen of the king, 
while his wealth was enormous and his possessions 
extended over nearly every shire of southern and 
central England. 
The The history of England, in fact, under its Danish 
" conquerors was really a development of those insti- 
tutions, whether administrative, fiscal, or judicial, 
which had been growing into shape under its West- 
Saxon kings. The conquest brought no violent in- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



411 



teiTuptlon to this development ; rather, by the social char ix. 
and political revolution it wrought, it enabled the The 
conqueror to carry out the work of his predecessors cnut° 
more rapidly and completely than would have been 1016^35. 
possible without so great a shock. In the local — 
organization of the realm the circumstances of Cnut's 
conquest left him no choice but to carry out in its 
entirety that change in the character of the great 
provincial governments which had been attempted 
by y^thelred in the case of Mercia. y^thelred's 
policy had implied the breaking-down of the tra- 
ditional West-Saxon system of the government of 
these dependencies by men of royal blood, and the 
appointment of ordinary delegates of the crown. 
Under Cnut this system was rapidly extended. The 
ealdormanries were changed into earldoms and the 
earls into pure nominees and dependants of the 
crown, a transformation which was marked by their 
summary displacement and replacement in their 
posts ; and the policy of ^thelred, adopted first by 
his Danish successor, was finally made the basis of 
the system of the Norman conqueror. 

The administrative system, too, had been taking ^^'^I'^fjl 
new form under y^thelred, and the stormy character tration. 
of his reign had shown the difficulties that attended 
the change. In his youth, indeed, when little alter- 
ation seems to have been made, government was still 
in the hands of one of the great ealdormen, and even 
after the king had arrived at full power. Archbishop 
Sigeric seems to have retained something of the 
same position of standing councillor of the realm 
which Dunstan had identified with the ofiice of the 
primate. But as years drew on the appearance of a 



412 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ix. new officer at court, the high thegn, marked the 
The beginning of an attempt on the part of the king to 
Cnut° supersede the traditional and constitutional advisers 

1016^35. ^y ministers of a more modern type chosen by and 
dependent on himself. Some such modification had 
become absolutely necessary under the conditions 
of the new English kingdom. With the increasing 
demands for government and administration over so 
wide an area, and the growing complexity of Eng- 
land's foreign relations, the need of a continuous 
ministry in constant communication with the king 
made itself more and more felt; and unpopular as 
was the institution of the head thegn, it became of 
the first importance from the wide extent of the em- 
pire over which Cnut ruled, and the necessity of del- 
egating his authority during any absence from his 
English dominions. The office, indeed, was not only 
continued by Cnut, but raised by him into a promi- 
nence it never afterwards lost. The transformation 
of the head thegn into a " Secundarius Regis " in 
the person of Godwine, marked a step towards the 
creation of the later justiciary and of the ministerial 
system which lasted on to the close of the Angevin 
reigns. 
The With the creation, however, of such an officer the 

king s ' ^ 

chaplains, systcm of Dunstan came practically to an end. The 
primate retained his position as councillor of the 
realm in virtue of his representation of the liberties 
of the Church and of the people, but his power was 
that of a constitutional check, not of a minister of 
the crown ; while the earls were only summoned to 
the three great Witenagemots to counsel on the 
affairs of the realm. The ordinary administration 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 413 

lay, therefore, wholly in the hands of the king and chap, ix. 
of his ministers. But for the carrying-out of the The 
details of government a staff of secretaries had now cnut.° 
become necessary, and there are found from this time loie^ioss 
in the king's chaplains a group of men, some of — 
whom were foreigners, like Duduc, who may have 
been chosen specially with a view to the transaction 
of foreign affairs, while others, like Stigand, were 
Englishmen; but all of whom were clearly picked 
men, and, as we see when they appear as bishops in 
later days, men of ability. The reward for their 
work was, in most cases, an episcopal see, and from 
now right up to the Reformation, service at the royal 
council-board became the ordinary road to a bishop- 
ric. It was to this fact that the English episcopate 
from this time owed its peculiarly political character 
and its close relations to the crown, and hence the 
institution of the " Royal Chapel " is one of the most 
important landmarks in our ecclesiastical history. 
But politically its effects were far greater. Admin- 
istration, indeed, in any true sense was now for the 
first time made really possible by the existence of a 
body of selected and trained administrators, con- 
stantly at work, and always at the disposal of the 
crown for fiscal, political, or judicial purposes ; a body 
which, reappearing in the justiciary and his ring of 
assistant secretaries, formed the nucleus of that per- 
manent royal council out of which all our judicial 
institutions, and to some extent our Parliament it- 
self, has sprung. 

Of even greater moment than ^Ethelred's admin- i^^^xation. 
istrative changes was his fiscal revolution. The es- 
tablishment of a land-tax had been attributed in 



414 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. popular fancy to the need of paying Danish tribute, 
The as its name of Danegeld shows. But its continu- 
cnut.° ance from this moment, whether Danes were in the 
101^35 ^^^^ 01" 1^0? shows that the need of meeting their de- 
— mands had only forced to the front a financial meas- 
ure which had become inevitable, and which was 
necessarily carried on under ^thelred's successors. 
The land-tax thus imposed formed the chief resource 
of the crown till the time of the Angevins; and 
though the taxation of personalty was introduced 
by Henry II., the land-tax still remained the main 
basis of English finance till the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. Its direct effects from the first 
in furnishing the crown with a large and continuous 
revenue gave a new strength to the monarchy, while 
its universal levy over every hide in the realm must 
have strengthened the national feeling. 
T/ie fo these two main bases of the royal power, a 
permanent admmistration and a fixed revenue, Cnut 
added a third even more directly important engine 
of government in the institution of the huscarls. 
The tendency to provincial isolation, the temptation 
of the ealdormen to sheer off into independent 
princes, remained as strong as in y^thelred's day. 
But now for the first time the king had an armed 
force ready at his call. The huscarls, whom Cnut 
retained as a bodyguard when he sent home the 
bulk of his Danish host, three or six thousand men 
as they were, were too few to hold the land against 
a national revolt. But they were a force strong 
enough to repress local rebellion ; they furnished a 
disciplined nucleus for the fyrd to gather round ; in 
the field they gave the king a new position as gen- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 415 

eral among his warring lieutenants ; and in more chap. ix. 
tranquil times they raised him high above the local The 
governors, who had no force save the hasty levy of ^cnut°^ 
shire and province at their call. The strength ^^^^^3^ 
which was given to the French crown by its " arch- — 
ers" in days long after, was given to the English 
crown by the huscarls. Continued by Cnut's suc- 
cessors to the Norman Conquest, imitated by the 
Norman kings in the "paid knights," who held 
themselves at the king's call, it was in great part to 
their existence that the new tranquillity which from 
this time characterized England must have been 
due. 

Still more significant of Cnut's temper than his ^f^'^j^ 
development of the existing civil organization of the church. 
realm were his dealings with the Church. His aim 
seemed to be not only to wipe away the memory of 
the stern deeds by which he had won his throne, but 
to identify himself even with the patriotism which 
had withstood the stranger. The saints he honored 
were saints who had won martyrdom at the hands of 
the Danes. Eadmund, of East Anglia, was the mar- 
tyr of the early Danish conquest, and Cnut refound- 
ed the abbey which had grown up over his tomb. 
Archbishop yElfheah was the martyr of the later 
Danish conquest, when the host of Thurkill harried 
the land, and Cnut followed the saint's body in its 
translation to Canterbury.' On the hill of Assandun 
the king built a church,' which commemorated alike 
the men who had fallen in fight for him and those 
who had fallen in fight for Eadmund ; while with a 

1 In 1023.— (A. S. G.) 

* Begun in 1020, finished in 1032. — (A. S. G.) 



41 6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. still more marked intent he made his way in later 
The days as a pilgrim to Glaston,bury, that he might 
cnut,° spread a gorgeous pall over Eadmund's tomb.' The 
1016^035 religious houses of Ely and Ramsey, the resting- 
— places of Englishmen slain at Maldon and Assandun, 
were especially enriched by his gifts ; and the names 
of Dunstan and Eadward the Martyr were honored 
by the anniversaries he instituted in their memory. 
Nor were these acts of Cnut's mere stratagems to 
break the nation's discontent at a stranger's rule. 
They were the signs of a settled policy, and of a 
policy which sprang from the temper of the king. 
Scarcely had the Danish kingdom fallen to him when 
he bescan to carrv out the same work there. Enorlish 
priests were sent to fill the Danish bishoprics ; even 
Roeskilde by Lethra, the old royal seat of the first 
Danish kings, received its bishop from England, con- 
secrated by an English primate. Indeed, the change 
which had turned Normans into Frenchmen, and 
men of the Danelaw into Englishmen, was seen 
working with a startling suddenness in Cnut himself. 
He had the Northman's gift of adaptation, the gift 
of absorbing the character and fashions of the men 
about him ; and in him the change was made the 
easier by his youthfulness. Within the young king's 
heart, indeed, the wild passions of the North slum- 
bered rather than died. In his own fatherland, on 
his own native seas, if Northern legend may be trust- 
ed, they leaped into fresh life. The Cnut of the Sa- 
o;as is to the last the Cnut of the wars with Eadmund, 
vigorous, unscrupulous, passionate, revengeful, thirsty 
of blood. But the wild mood was hushed on Eng- 
' In 1032.— (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. .jy 

lish ground. The traditions, the songs which told chap.ix. 
of him in after -time to EngHshmen, were peaceful, The 
gentle, even familiar in tone. " Merrily sang the ^cnut.^^ 
monks in Ely as Cnut King rowed by," runs a verse ^^^^35 
of one of these songs which has floated down to us — 
across the ao^es to tell how the music-lovine kine 
bade his men row near one of his favorite religious 
houses, " Row, cnihtes, near the land, and hear we 
these monks sing." 

Cnut's greatest gift to his people was that of peace. ^^^'^ 
All fear of the pirates was henceforth at an end. iiwd. 
The Dane was no longer an enemy. Danish fleets 
no longer hung off the coasts. On the contrary, it 
was English ships and English soldiers who now fol- 
lowed Cnut in his Northern wars. With him beean 
the long internal tranquillity which was from this 
time to be the special note of our national history. 
For seventeen years the country rested in profound 
repose. There were troubles, indeed, in the Welsh 
marches; and a raid of the Scots wrought evil in 
Northumbria. But with these slight exceptions the 
land was untroubled from without. The absence of 
discontent is proved by the quiet of the country dur- 
ing the long periods of Cnut's absence in the North 
in the latter part of his reign. Such an internal 
tranquillity came, no doubt, in great measure from 
the exhaustion of the country, from that craving for 
peace and order which follows on long periods of 
anarchy, and which gives a new strength to the 
crown. But the temper, the greatness of Cnut, must 
have counted for much. The tendency to a semi- 
feudalism which had baffled ^Ethelred was held 
sternly down. The murder of Eadric showed how 

27 



41 8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. ruthlessly Cnut meant to deal with any attempt at 
The independence, while in the banishment of Eric and 
^c?at.°^ Thurkill it was seen that the new earls held their 
lOieToas posts solely at the king's will. The political instinct 
~~ of Cnut, too, trusted to something more than personal 
dread ; for in the efficiency of the huscarls he found 
a ready and irresistible means of enforcing the com- 
mon decisions of the government. 
c>mfs guj; behind the material forces by which the pow- 
er of the crown was guarded, and breathing life into 
the strict fulfilment of his pledge to rule according 
to the laws of the English kings, was Cnut's own 
resolve to govern rightly. In him, as in y^lfred, we 
are able to reach to the very heart of the man by 
the fortune which has preserved to us the king's 
own words. After ten years of rule he addressed 
his people from the foreign land where he was then 
in pilgrimage, in a letter memorable as the first per- 
sonal address of an English king to Englishmen 
which has reached us, but even more memorable 
for the light it throws on the simple grandeur of 
his character and the noble conception he had 
formed of kingship. " I have vowed to God to lead 
a right life in all things," he wrote, " to rule justly 
and piously my realms and subjects, and to admin- 
ister just judgment to all. If, heretofore, I have 
done aught beyond what was just, through headiness 
or negligence of youth, I am ready with God's help 
to amend it utterly." No royal officer, either for 
fear of the king or for favor to any, is to consent to 
injustice : none is to do wrong to rich or poor " as 
they prize my friendship and their own welfare." 
He especially denounces unjust exactions : " I have 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^iq 

no need that money be heaped together for me by chap. ix. 
unjust demands." " I have sent this letter before The 
me," ends the young king — he was still little more ^cnut.°^ 
than thirty — "that all the people of my realm may^Q^^gg 
rejoice in my well-doing ; for as you yourselves — 
know, never have I spared nor will I spare to spend 
myself and my toil in what is needful and good for 
my people." 

One of the most important results of the long Oxford. 
peace under Cnut, and of the new connection with 
the Scandinavian countries which was brought about 
by his rule, was the development of English trade 
and commerce. As yet, indeed, the inland trade of 
the country was very small. The rivers were its 
roads, and it was along the rivers that the trading 
towns for the most part sprang up. But though the 
Thames was already a waterway by which London 
could communicate with the heart of England, no 
town save Oxford had as yet arisen along its course. 
The name of the place tells the story of its birth. 
At a point where the Thames suddenly bends for a 
while to the south, and just before its waters are 
swollen by those of the Cherwell, a wide and shallow 
reach of the river offered a ford by which the cat- 
tle-drovers from Wessex could cross the stream and, 
traversing the marshy fields which edged it, mount 
the low slope of a gravel spit, between the two rivers, 
that formed the site of the latter city. On this slope 
a house of secular canons had grown up, by the close 
of the ninth century, round the tomb of a local saint, 
Fritheswith or Frideswide ; and at the point where 
the road, reaching its summit, broke into three 
branches, to run northward, eastward, and westward, 



420 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. IX. a little town furnished the germ of the future Ox- 
The ford. It probably extended only over the site of 
three of its later parishes — that of St. Martin, whose 
claims to be the earliest of its churches were con- 
firmed by its recognition as the " city church," and 
by the meeting of the Portmannimot in its church- 

EARLY OXFORD. 



Keign of 
Cnut. 

1016-1035. 




yard;' that of St. Mildred,' whose name shows its 
Mercian date; and the parish of All -Hallows be- 
tween them ; while it was linked to the ford by a 
thin line of houses, the later Fish Street, with a 

^ A charter (Hist. Mon. Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, i. 439) shows 
the church to be older than Cnut's day. 

^ The site of this parish is now covered by Lincoln and Exeter col- 
leges. Mildred, who died towards the close of the seventh century, 
was niece of Wulfhere of Mercia, and one of the most noted of the 
old English saints. — (A. S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 42 1 

church of St. Aldad, or Aldate, In the midst of it. chap, ix. 
The little borough was probably extending its bounds The 
to the westward over the ground marked by the ^cnut°^ 
parish of St. Ebbe' when Alfred established hisj^^^gg 
mint there; and the presence of a mint shows that — 
it was already a place of some importance. The 
loss of London and of the lower Thames valley in 
the Danish wars had, in fact, made it a border-town 
of the Mercian ealdormanry after the peace of Wed- 
more ; and the mound upon which its castle-keep 
was afterwards reared may have been among the 
first of those works of fortification by which yEthel- 
red and his lady held their own against the Danes. 
As from this time it grew in importance and wealth, 
Oxford divided with London the traffic along the 
Thames : we catch our first glimpse of its burghers 
when an abbot of Abingdon, in return for a toll of 
herrings which their barges paid in passing, con- 
sented to cut a new channel for their transit." 

What Oxford had become to the trade of the Notting- 
Thames, Torksey and Nottingham were becoming ^^^' 
to the trade of the Trent. Nottingham, where 
Eadward's bridge spanned the river, while his two 
mounds commanded its banks, was growing into im- 
portance not merely as a point of contact between 
England and the north, but as a centre of internal 
navigation. The town was still a small one, with 
but two churches, one on either side the river, and 
its life was purely industrial, for no abbey towered 

1 As Ebbe was martyred in 870, the churches of her dedication 
generally mark the revival under Alfred and his children ; and so 
their parishes may be assigned to this time. 

' Hist. Abingdon (Stevenson), i. 481, " Nam illorum navigium saepi- 
us transitum illic habebat." 



42 2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. over its lanes, nor was the rock that overhung it 
The crowned yet with its castle. To keep open the two 
cnut.° highways by land and by water that intersected 

1016^035 ^^ ^^^^ point was the main duty of the burghers ; 
they were bound to guard alike " the water of the 
Trent " and " the foss and road that leads to York." 
A fine of eight pounds punished any one who 
ploughed or trenched within two perches of the 
road, or hindered in any way the passage of boats 
alono- the stream.' Tolls for the river traffic formed 
part of the revenues of the town, and the existence 
of a merchant-gild side by side with its cnichten- 
gild showed its trading activity. 

Gloucester, jj-^ |-}^g richcj and busier valley of the Severn, 
where fisheries were now of great value, for at least 
sixty-five are mentioned in charters along its course,'' 
Gloucester was fast rising into importance. The 
foundation of a nunnery there in 68 1 showed that 
life had, even in the seventh century, returned to the 
ruins of the Roman Glevum, and in the time of 
i^lfred the town was already of sufficient note for 
him to establish a mint there. In later days the 
nunnery gave place to a college of secular priests, 
and that again, under Cnut, to a Benedictine abbey. 
But besides its religious life, the position of Glouces- 
ter was rapidly giving to the town an increasing po- 
litical importance. Lying, as it did, in the border- 
land between the two races, in a territory where the 
Welsh blood and the Welsh tongue were still com- 



' See the description of the town in Domesday Book, and its char- 
ter. — Stubbs, Select Charters, 1 59. 

2 There were at least thirty-three on the Wye. The salmon fish- 
eries of these rivers were already leased. — Cod. Dip. 695. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. .33 

mon, Gloucester was destined in the followine reisn chap. ix. 
to become one of the state-towns of the realm. As The 
yet, however, Worcester, as the dwelling-place of ^cfut.°^ 
ealdorman and bishop, retained its supremacy ; and 101^35 
the gift of its market dues, wain-shilHng and load- — 
penny, was the costliest among the many boons 
which i^thelred and i^thelflaed showered on Bishop 
Werfrith. 

Small, however, as were the beginnings of English Chester. 
trade, it had begun ; and a survey of the seaports will 
show how much it owed to the impulse of the Danes. 
The port of Chester depended on the trade with 
Ireland, which had sprung up since the settlement of 
the Northmen along the Irish coasts. The tow^n — 
as we know — was one of the most recent in Britain ; 
for its site had lain waste for three hundred years 
before ^^thelflaed, in 907, restored and enlarged its 
Roman walls, raised the mound beside its bridee, 
and created the new Chester, which, like its prede- 
cessor, watched alike the country to the north and 
the Welsh passes to the south and westward of the 
river. It was probably to aid in its repeopling that 
the secular house of the Mercian saint, Werburgfh/ 
was founded in the northeastern quarter of the city, 

* Indications of the growth of population in towns may be found 
in the provision of new churches, dedicated to saints in popular fa- 
vor at the time. The conversion of the English kingdoms gave rise 
in the seventh century to a number of saints ; as, for example, St. 
Wilfrid, St. Werburgh, St. Mildred, St. Etheldreda, etc. Saints, such 
as St. Swithin, St. Eadmund, and St. Ebbe, in the ninth century, 
marked the early period of the West-Saxon monarchy, as St. Duns- 
tan and St. .^Ifheah marked its later period. The northern saints 
of the eleventh century — St. Olaf and St. Magnus — only just pre- 
ceded the influx of Norman saints to whom so many later churches 
were dedicated. — (A. S. G.) 



424 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP^ix. while its security was provided for by a custom re- 

The ' corded in Domesday, which b'ound every hide in the 

cnut. shire to furnish a man at its town-reeve's call to re- 

1016^35, P^i^ walls and bridge. The new town probably grew 
up by degrees over the ruins of the old : St. Wer- 

EARLY CHESTER. 




burgh's house stood alone in the northeastern quar- 
ter, and the absence of any older churches in the 
northwestern makes it possible that at first only the 
southern part of the city, as was likely from its neigh- 
borhood to the bridge, was built over, for here we 
find on either side of the street leading to the bridge 
the churches of St. Martin, St. Bridget, and St. Mi- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 425 

chael ; while yet more to the south the church of St. chap. ix. 
Olaf pointed, like the twelve law-men who presided The 
in its law-court, to a Danish settlement, the result, cnut.° 
perhaps, of a Danish occupation of the city in the loielioas 
later course of the struggle between the Danelaw — 
and the English kings. 

Chester lay in a wild and half-barbarous region : ^^^ ^''^de. 
the country round it, like most of northern England,' 
was almost destitute of wheat and grain,^ and formed 
a vast pasture-land, whose inhabitants differed little 
in their mode of life from their Welsh neighbors 
across the Dee. .. Their main food was barley-bread 
or oat-cake. Only the richer ate meat, the bulk con- 
tented themselves with milk and cheese.' But in 
spite of such a neighborhood the town grew fast ; 
and the legend which makes it the scene of Ead- 
gar's triumph, when he was rowed upon the Dee by 
vassal kings, and knelt with them about him in the 
church of St. John without its walls, shov/s at any 
rate its importance in Dunstan's day. Its position, 
indeed, was as valuable commercially as it was polit- 
ically ; and its market-place offered one of the wild- 
est and most picturesque scenes of the new commer- 
cial life. Among the piles of cheeses which then, 
as now, formed the main produce of the Cheshire 
plain, the piles of bannock and barley-bread, and the 
crates of fish which the fish-wives brought from the 
fisheries of the Dee, its sturdy burghers pushed their 
way through a motley crowd, in which the trader 
from the Danish towns of Ireland strove in his 

' Will. Malm., Gest. Pontif. (Migne), p. 308. 
* " Farris et maxime tritico inops." — p. 308. 
^ Will. Malm., Gest. Pontif. (Migne), p. 308. 



426 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP^ix. northern tongue to draw buyers to his gang of 
The slaves, while the Welsh kerne, wrapped in his blank- 
Cnut° G^' who had driven across the bridge the small and 
1016^35 wiry cattle from his native hills, chattered as he 
— might with the hardly less wild Cumbrian from the 
lands beyond the Ribble. 
Bristol. Whatever part the slave-trade played in the com- 
merce of Chester, it was the main traffic of Bristol, 
The rise of Bristol had been probably as recent as 
that of its rival port on the western coast; a num- 
ber of coins,' indeed, which witness to the presence 
of a mint here in Cnut's day, form the first historic 
evidence of the existence of the town itself, though 
the presence of a parish of St. Mildred within its 
bounds suggests an earlier life in Mercian days. 
The trade with southern Ireland, from which its 
importance sprang, originated at any rate with the 
planting of Danish towns on the Irish coast, and 
the rise of Bristol into commercial activity cannot 
have been earlier than that of Dublin or Waterford. 
For a trade with Ireland the estuary of the Severn 
was the natural entrepot, and the deep channel of 
the Avon furnished a port at that point of the est- 
uary from whence roads led most easily into the 
heart of Britain. The town, however, was still a 
small one in the days of the Confessor,' nor was its 

' Mr. John Evans writes to me that he has in his collection four 
coins of Cnut struck at Bristol by the moneyers, ^gelwine and 
^Ifwine. Hildebrand describes thirty-two varieties of Cnut's coins 
struck at Bristol which are now in the Stockholm Museum. In the 
same collection is one coin of ^thelred the Second, minted by 
^LFPERD ON BRIE — , of which Mr. Evans has also a specimen. 
—(A. S. G.) 

^ It was coupled with the manor of Barton in a joint payment of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 437 

general traffic probably as yet of much consequence, chap. ix. 
But nowhere was the slave-trade so active. The The 
Bristol burgher bought up men over the whole face ^cnut.°^ 
of England for export to Ireland, where the Danes, ^^^^035 
as elsewhere, acted as factors for the slave-markets — 
of half Europe. Youths and maidens were, above 
all, the object of their search ; and in the market of 
the town rows of both might be seen chained and 
roped together for the mart. With a yet viler 
greed the girls were hired out for purposes of pros- 
titution as well as of sale, and often sold in a state 
of pregnancy.' It was in vain that canon and law 
forbade that Christian, guiltless men should be sold 
out of the land, and, above all, to heathen purchasers, 
or that this prohibition was repeated in the laws of 
Cnut." It was easy, indeed, to evade such enact- 
ments. The man who had been reduced to slavery 
by sentence of law, or the children who inherited 
his taint of blood, could not be held as the guiltless 
persons mentioned in it; and no English law would 
be made to apply to slaves either purchased or tak- 
en in war from the neighboring Welsh. 

While the trade with the Irish Ostmen was thus Seaports 
raising Chester and Bristol into importance, \\\^ south cLst. 
towns of the English Channel continued little more 
than fishing towns. Exeter, perhaps, may have 
carried on some slight traffic with the land of the 
Franks. The town stood two miles above the mouth 

a hundred and ten marks of silver as " feorm " to the royal excheq- 
uer, as though it had grown out of this manor at but a recent time 
(see entry in Domesday). It seems as yet to have been an open 
borough ; its castle was certainly of far later date. 

^ Malmesbury, Vit. Wulstani, Angl. Sacr. p. 258. 

* Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 377-379. 



428 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. of the Exe, but shallow as Its channel seems nowa- 
The days, the small craft of the town could easily moor 
cnut." beneath its walls, and the part it played in the after- 

1016^35. ^^^ with the Normans shows that it had grown into 
a strong and wealthy place. But eastward of Exe- 
ter we see only a trace of little ports to which the 
fisheries were beginning to give life. Of those on 
the Dorsetshire coast Wareham was the most thriv- 
ing ; it was the shire-town, with a house for the king 
when he came there on his ridings, a dwelling for 
the shire-reeve, and inns for all the leadinar theofns 
of the shire ; but like its fellow towns it had hardly 
risen to the dignity of really civic existence, it had 
never bought its "feorm," and each of its burghers 
paid his dues either directly or through his lord to 
\ -, the king's reeve. Farther \vestward Hampton and 
Portsmouth are but names to us, and it is only when 
we reach the Kentish coast that we find a real com- 
mercial life in Sandwich and Dover. Dover had 
long been the point of passage for Gaul ; and on 
the silting up of the channel between Thanet and 
Kent, Sandwich had risen from a little hamlet on 
the sandy flats beside the ruined Richborough, into 
the main port of the Channel. Its " butsecarls " 
were present in the fleets that the kings gathered 
in the channel ;' its ferry-dues and port-tolls formed 
a good part of the revenue of Christ-Church at Can- 
terbury, to which Cnut granted them in later days ;' 

^ In 1009 ^thelred gathered his fleet there. Tostig took " butse- 
carls" or sailors from it, doubtless as the best mariners of the coast. 

'' Cod. Dip. 737. Cnut grants to Christ-Church the port and all 
the "exitus" of its waters, amongst them the right of "wreck" or 
"strand," so far as a man can throw from a ship fully laden and 
floating in the river " securis parvula quam Angli vocant Taper-eax 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



429 



they were rich enough, indeed, to tempt the greed chap, ix. 
of his son,' and to draw the two great Kentish ab- The 
beys into a long strife for their possession. But in cnut.° 
spite of " the craft that lay at its wharf," its reckoning ^Q^^^^^gg 
of time by " herring-seasons " shows that Sandwich — 
was still a fishing town rather than a merchant port. 

Alono^ the eastern coast, however, the trade with Trade of 

. . the east 

the north, which had followed in the wake of the coast. 
Danish conquest, was now arousing commerce into 
a far more vigorous life. " What do you bring to 
us T the merchant is asked in an Old - English 
dialogue. " I bring skins, silks, costly gems, and 
gold," he answers, " besides various garments, pig- 
ment, wine, oil, and ivory, with brass and copper 
and tin, silver and olass, and such like."' The 



super terram," and on the high seas outside the harbor as far as 
high-water mark, and beyond this the length of a man's stature as 
he holds a sprouting branch in his hand and stretches it as far out 
as he can, " tenentis lignum quod Angli nominant spreot et tenden- 
tis ante se quantum potest." All found on this "strand," be it 
clothes or net or arms or iron or gold or silver, went half to the 
finder and half to the monks. 

* Cod. Dip. 758. " Harald the king caused Sandwich to be rid- 
den about to his own hand ; and he kept it to himself well-nigh 
two herring-seasons." The rival house, St. Augustine, had a great 
longing for Sandwich, and strove to buy it of Harald or to make a 
compromise with the monks of Christ-Church. But it was in vain 
that Abbot ^Ifstan of St. Augustine lowered his demands even " to 
a third penny of the tolls, and he to give the convent (of Christ- 
Church) ten pounds : they refused it altogether, and said it was no 
use asking. . . . And when he could not get on in this war, he asked 
leave to make a wharf over against Meldthryth's acre opposite the 
ferry, but all the convent decidedly opposed this. . . . The Abbot 
.^Ifstan set to with a great help, and let dig a great canal at Hy- 
pelles fleot, hoping that craft would lie there just as they did at 
Sandwich ; however he got no good by it." 

^ Quoted from MS. Tib. A. 3, in Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Sax. 
iii. 100. 



430 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. main trade with the Wash or the Humber was, 
The probably, of rougher wares than these — the skins 
cnut.° ^^^ ropes and ship -masts which, at a later day, 
loiiToss formed the staple of the Baltic trade in the hands 
— of the Hanse Towns, and, above all, the iron and 
steel that the Scandinavian lands so long supplied 
to Britain. The herring-fishery in the German Sea 
had long been a lucrative branch of employment 
among the northern peoples ; and as this was al- 
ready absorbing the boats of Dover and Sandwich, 
we cannot doubt that it formed as large a part of 
the business of the eastern ports. With the grow- 
ing rigidity of the ecclesiastical rules for fasting and 
abstinence, the supply of fish as an article of diet 
became every day a more important matter. The 
inland -fisher supplied eels, haddocks, minnows, and 
eel-pouts, skate and lampreys, from rivers and fish- 
ponds ; the sea-fisher brought herrings and salmon, 
porpoises, sturgeons, oysters and crabs, mussels, 
winkles, cockles, flounders, plaice, and lobsters, as 
the harvest of the sea.' With the whale-fishery of 
the northern ocean, which was to bring wealth, in 
later days, to the Humber, the English seaman, if 
we may trust a representation of the time, was too 
timid to meddle. " Can you take a whale ?'^ asks 
his questioner. " Many," he answers, " take whales 
without danger, and then they get a great price, 
but I dare not, from the fearfulness of my mind." ' 
lis sea- But Dane and Norwegian were traders over a 
yet wider field than the northern seas ; ' their barks 

^ ^Ifric's Dialogues in the Cotton Library MS. Tib. A. 3 ; quoted 
in Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Sax. iii. 20. ^ Ibid. 22. 

^ As early as Harald Fair-hair's time, his son, Biorn, " ruled over 



ports. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



431 



entered the Mediterranean, while the overland route chap. ix. 
throuQ:h Russia brouo^ht the silks and o:old-work of The 
Constantinople and the East to their Eastland cnut.° 
traders ; and the tempting list of wares which the 101^035 
merchant describes in ^E^lfric's dialogue may have 
fairly represented what the Northmen brought to 
their markets at Grimsby or York. The growth 
of this northern trade, at any rate, is shown by 
the growth of the ports along the eastern coast. 
Ipswich was becoming a considerable town, with 
some five hundred houses and between two and 
three thousand inhabitants ; Dunwich, too, though 
even then threatened by the sea, was growing fast; 
but neither could vie in size or wealth with Nor- 
wich. Its site, at the confluence of the Wensum 
with the Yare, at the highest point to which the 
tidal water then penetrated, could not fail to call to 
the town population and traffic ; and the wealth and 
daring of its six or seven thousand inhabitants soon 
became proverbial. Many of these were probably 
Danes ; and the town gave an odd proof of its con- 
nection with the Scandinavian lands by paying, as 
Domesday tells us, among its yearly dues to the 
king, "a bear, and six dogs for the bear-baiting." 
The merchants of Lincoln were also closely linked 
with the north ; a Norwegian king, indeed, on the 

Westfold, and generally lived at Tunsberg, and went but little on 
war expeditions. Tunsberg at that time was much frequented by 
merchant-vessels, both from the Wik and the north country, and 
also from the south, from Denmark, and from Saxon-land. King 
Biorn had also merchant-ships on voyages to other lands, by which 
he procured himself costly goods, and such things as he thought 
needful, and so his brothers called him "the Freightman" and 
"the Merchant." — Harald Fair-hair's Saga, Laing, Sea Kings, i. 305. 



432 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ix. eve of an expedition, could leave his treasure in the 
The hands of one of them. No bishop's minster or earl's 
cnut.° castle as yet crowned the hill - top of Lincoln ; but 

1016^35. ^^^ increase of trade was already drawing its long, 
steep street down the slope, at whose foot the 
Witham breaks through the upland to the flats of 
the Wash. In those flats Boston was growing up 
round the abbey of St. Botulf, to depose Lincoln 
as Hull deposed York, when the increasing size of 
vessels made the Witham and Ouse impassable for 
traffic. But as yet the tiny commerce needed only 
vessels that drew little water ; and Lincoln, with its 
merchant -guild and its twelve lawmen ruling the 

O/f.^ I city sokes, was a mart of both inland and outland 
trade.' 
Vor^. The centre, however, of the northern trade was 
York. In the days of Dunstan ' much of its Roman 
glory still lingered on in noble buildings and mas- 
sive walls, even then crumbling with age ; but its 
later fortunes under Engle and Dane were marked 
by the mound which rose on the tongue of land 
at the junction of Foss and Ouse, a mound which 
had probably been raised in the early Northum- 
brian days to command the port, and on which the 
northern conquerors of York had planted a for- 
tress, whose demolition by ^thelstan announced the 
subjection of the Danelaw," and whose site is now 
marked by the ruined fortress of yet later days call- 
ed Clifford's Tower. The city was proud of its pop- 

' " Emporium hominum terra marique venientium." — Will. Malm,, 
Gest. Pontificum (Hamilton), p. 312. 
^ Life of Oswald (Raine), Hist, of Church of York, p. 454, etc. 
^ Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 213. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



433 



ulation and wealth. It boasted of thirty thousand chap^ix. 
dwellers; it really contained some two thousand The Reign 
houses and about ten thousand inhabitants, a num- ° — ' 

1016-1035. 
EARLY YORK 




ber far beyond that of any other English town save 
London/ The city, indeed, now not only filled the 

' " Gaudet de multitudine populorum, non minus virorum ac mu- 
lierum, exceptis parvulis et pubetinis, quam xxx. milia in eadem 

28 



434 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR IX. wedge-like space between the Foss and the Ouse, 

The but stretched to south-east and south-west, over both 

cnut° rivers, in considerable suburbs. Across the Ouse 

1016^35. houses gathered thickly round the two churches of 

St. Mary, Bishops-hill, in the fabric of one of which 

we find fragments of the Roman work with which 

this part of York abounds, while across the Foss the 

fishers gathered in their own Fisher-gate. A third 

suburb along the Ouse is marked as a Danish 

quarter by the later church of St. Olaf and by 

Siward's choice of a burial-place there; and here, 

no doubt, mainly centred the trade and wealth of 

the town.' 

London. From the first upgrowth of commerce, however, 
the centre of the whole trading -life of England was 
London. Its early history is lost in obscurity. We 
know nothing of the circumstances of its conquest, 
of the fate of its citizens, or of the settlement of the 
conquerors within its walls. That some such settle- 
ment had taken place, at least as early as the close 
of the seventh century, is plain from the story of 
Mellitus, when placed as bishop within its walls ; 
but it is equally plain that the settlement was an 
English one, that the provincials had here, as else- 
where, disappeared, and that the ruin of the city had 
been complete. Had London merely surrendered 

civitate numerati sunt." — Life of Oswald, p. 454. Strictly con- 
strued, this would mean some fifty or sixty thousand dwellers ; 
but either number is absurd. Domesday gives 141 8 houses for five 
of its "shires" and one "shire" waste, with 189 for the archbishop's 
"shire.'' 

' " Inedicibiliter repleta est, et mercatorum gazis locupleta qui 
undique adveniunt, maxime ex Danorum gente." — Life of Oswald, 
(Raine), Hist, of Church of York, i. 454. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 435 

to the East Saxons and retained its older population chap. ix. 
and municipal life, it is hard to imagine how, within The 
less than half a century, its burghers could have so cnut.° 
wholly lost all trace of Christianity that not even jQ^^^iosg 
a ruined church, as at Canterbury, remained for 
the use of the Christian bishop, and that the first 
care of Mellitus was to set up a mission -church 
in the midst of a heathen population. It is even 
harder to imagine how all trace of the municipal 
institutions, to which the Roman towns clung so 
obstinately, should have so utterly disappeared. 
But more direct proofs of the wreck of the town 
meet us in the stray glimpses which we are able to 
get of its earlier topographical history. The story 
of early London is not that of a settled community 
slowly putting off the forms of Roman for those 
of English life, but of a number of little groups 
scattered here and there over the area within the 
walls, each growing up with its own life and insti- 
tutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses, and the like, 
and only slowly drawing together into a municipal 
union which remained weak and imperfect even at 
the Norman conquest. 

Unluckily, it is only here and there that we can ^^'"d' 
even dimly trace the growth of these little commu- tumenL 
nities. The first which we can clearly follow is 
that of the church and monastery of St. Paul. The 
ground which i^thelberht gave Bishop Mellitus for 
his minster and its accompanying buildings — ground 
which formed the highest point in the city, and 
whose area corresponds with that of the present pre- 
cinct of the cathedral-church — was no doubt a spot 
waste and uninhabited, and thus formed part of the 



436 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ix. folk-land which was at the king's disposal' But from 
The other indications we may gather that not this spot 
cmit.° only, but the whole area about it, was waste and un- 
1016^35. inhabited. To the north of St. Paul's, for instance, the 
— ground on which St. Martin's-le-Grand was planted 
seems, from the rise of this great church there, to 
have been mainly open ground at the eve of the 
Norman conquest ; while to the westward it was still 
easy for the Franciscans to find room for their set- 
tlement as late as the thirteenth century. The space 
south of the precincts was chiefly occupied in later 
days by the soke of Castle Baynard, a fortress with 
which the Norman kings bridled the city on the 
westward, as they bridled it to the east with the 
Tower," and which was probably built, like the Tow- 
er itself, on open ground which may have been only 
recently won from the foreshore of the river. The 
waste state of the ground has left its mark even 
on the little lane now known as St. Benet's, which 
stretches along the borders of this soke, from Paul's 
Chain to Paul's Wharf. As one of the first needs 
for the fringe of population which would naturally 
grow up around the precincts was that of access to 
the river, this lane can hardly have been later in 
growth than the close of the eighth century, and 
formed a part of the bishop's liberty; but as neither 
this liberty, nor the parish of St. Benet's, which ec- 

^ The bounds of the grant were probably much the same as those 
of the present precincts, with Old Change to the eastward, Pater- 
noster Row to the north, Ave-Maria Lane and Creed Lane to the 
west, and Carter Lane to the south. 

^ The soke of Castle Baynard comprised the whole district round 
the precincts of St. Paul's, from Benet's Lane to the Wall, and north- 
ward as far as Ludgate. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 437 

clesiastically represented it, extended much beyond chap, ix. 
the lane itself, we may conjecture that it ran through The 
a district which was at this time unoccupied. cnut.° 

The settlement about St. Paul's, however, was far jQ^g^^gg 
from beinoj as early as the ag^e of Mellitus, for the ^ — : ^ 

^ . . -^ . ^ GroTvth of 

work of that missionary was interrupted by the apos- popjiia- 
tasy of the East Saxons; and it is not till half a cen- 
tury later, when London had passed under the Mer- 
cian rule,' that we again find bishops settled there. 
The most famous of these is Erkenwald,' and it is 
to him and his immediate successors that we must 
attribute the little ring of churches and parishes — 
such as St. Augustine, St. Gregory, St. Benet, and 
St. Faith' — which show a growth of population round 
the precincts of the minster. The legend of Erken- 
wald for the first time brings us face to face with 
the new burghers in their struggle with the monks 
of Chertsey and the nuns of Barking, at whose house 
he had died, for the possession of the sainted bishop's 
remains. They broke into the death-chamber, runs 
the legend, seized the corpse, and set it in a wagon, 
drawn by oxen, to carry it to the city. Their torches, 
however, were blown out by a mighty storm, they 
could not ford the swollen waters of the Lea, nor 
find boats to cross it, and a fresh strife rose over the 

' Wulfhere of Mercia sold its bishopric to Wini in 666. — Baeda, 
H. E. lib. iii. c. 7. 

^ Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 6. He became bishop in 675 or 676, and 
died about 693. — Stubbs, article on "Erkenwald" in Diet. Christ. 
Biogr. ii. 178. 

^ The dedications to St. Augustine and St. Gregory bear evidence 
of close association with the conversion of England. St. Benet's 
or St. Benedict's recalls the fact that it was during Erkenwald's 
episcopate that the Benedictine rule first began to make its way in 
England. St. Faith was a favorite early dedication. — (A. S. G.) 



438 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. remains, which only ended in both parties praying 
The for a miracle to decide between them. At their 

^cnut.° prayers the waters parted and suffered the wagon to 

1016^035. P^^^ through, the torches relighted themselves, the 
— storm ceased, and the burghers brought the body 
of their saint in triumph into London/ About the 
same time, in the reign of Wulfhere's successor, 
y^thelred, we catch the first indication of a revival 
of the trade and foreign commerce of the town in 
its mention as a mart for slaves, and the presence 
there of merchants from Frisiaf while towards the 
close of the seventh century its " wic reeve " is men- 
tioned in the laws of the Kentish kings.' 

The Cheap. If ^c look for the site of the early community to 
which reeve and market and burgesses belonged, 
tradition takes us to the district afterwards known 
as the Ward of Cheap, as the oldest part of London. 
Nor is the tradition at variance with the indications 
of the ground itself. Nowhere was life so likely to 
awake again as along the banks of the Walbrook, 
then and for centuries to come a broad river-channel, 
between whose muddy banks the stream was still 
deep enough to float the small boats used in the 
traffic up from the Thames to the very edge of the 
" Cheap," or market-place, at the hythe or port which 
tradition fixed in the modern Bucklersbury.* But 

' We may perhaps find a trace of Erkenwald in the church of All 
Hallows, Barking, in the neighborhood of the Tovi'er. Erkenwald 
was the founder of the monastery at Barking, and the church and 
parish may mark the locality of a soke or manor which he had 
granted to it. ^ Bseda, H. E. lib. iv. c. 22. 

^ Laws of Hlothere and Eadric. — Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 35. 

* Stow's London (ed. Thorns), p. 97. Cheapward runs along the 
Walbrook, from Bucklersbury to the Poultry. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



439 



that the space between this border of the Cheap and chap, ix. 
the minster precincts was already fairly peopled by The 
the close of the eighth century, we may gather from cnut.° 
the site of two of the churches within this area, joi^oss 
From the days of Wulfhere to those of Ecgberht, — 
London, save for its temporary subjection to the 
West- Saxon rule by Ine, remained under the rule 
of the Mercian kings, one of the' greatest of whom, 
Offa, is traditionally said to have occupied a king's 
vill in what must have then been open ground to 
the north of the little borough we have been describ- 
ing, at a spot now marked by St. Alban's church in 
Wood Street.' Mildred was a popular Mercian saint 
of the time ; and if the two churches dedicated to her 
in Bread Street and in the Poultry be, as is likely, 
of this date, they would show that the space between 
the Cheap and the minster, from Fish Street on the 
south to our Cheapside on the north, had grown 
into a single borough before the days of Ecgberht.' 

^ In Abbot Paul's time — 1077-1093 — the Abbey of St. Alban's ac- 
quired " plures ecclesias in Lundoniis, quarum unius donationem, 
scilicet Sancti Albani, pro patronatu alterius, nescitur qua consi- 
deratione Abbati Westmonasteriensi concessit. Fuit autem capella 
regis Oflfa, fundatoris, cui fuit continuum suum regale palatium. 
Sed incuria sequacium et desidia omnis locus ille, improba occu- 
patione civium vicinorium, in parvum mansum, libertatem tamen 
antiquam retinentem, coartatur." — Hist. Mon. S. Albani (ed. Riley), 
i. 55. That is, an old chapel, perhaps of Offa's king's-tun, was 
given to St. Alban's after the conquest, and then made a church 
under the abbey-saint's name. Stow and the ordinary London 
historians blunder wildly about this. A grant of the last Mercian 
king, Burhred, of a " gaziferi agelluli in vico Lundoniae, hoc est ubi 
nominatur Ceolmundingchaga, qui est non longe from (sic) West- 
getum positus" (Thorpe, Diplomatarium, p. 118), points to some 
dwellings about " Westgate," the " Newgate" of later days. 

"- That this early London grew up on ground from which the 
Roman city had practically disappeared may be inferred from the 



440 ^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ix. The Story of the eastern half of London is, in its 
The earliest part, even more obscure than the story of the 
cnut." western half. The great central road from Newgate, 
101&T035. which crossed Walbrook at the Poultry, stretches 
—^_ thence through its area to London Bridge; and a 
c/ieap. Cheap grew up, probably at a very early time, on the 
southern side of this road, the East-Cheap of later 
days, though far smaller and less important than the 
Cheap in the west. But this Cheap must at first 
have stood almost isolated ;' it was only slowly that 
population spread over the space about it, and dwell- 
ings rose scantily and sporadically along the line of 
communication which led from the bridofe over Wal- 
brook to the various gates, and through these to the 
country beyond. It is thus as a place of traffic that 
London reappears in history. Its position, indeed, 
was such that traffic could not fail to re-create the 
town ; for, whether a bridge or a ferry existed at this 

change in the main line of communication which passed through 
the heart of each. This was the road which led from Newgate to 
the bridge. In Roman London this seems to have struck through 
the city in a direct line from Newgate to a bridge in the neighbor- 
hood of the present Budge Row. Of this road the two extremities 
survived in English London : one from the gate to the precincts of 
St. Paul, the other in the present Budge Row. But between these 
points all trace of it is lost. The lines of the street that ran through 
the area which it must have traversed are not only not in accord- 
ance with it, but thrown diagonally across it. It is the same wher- 
ever we dig over the site of the ancient city ; the remains of Roman 
London which we discover have little or no relation to the lines of 
the modern times. 

■ We see it, however, extending as early as the close of the eighth 
century, when Offa (Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 34, note) confirms a gift 
of two brothers to the church of S. Denys of a plot of ground "in 
portu qui nuncupatur Lunden-wick," in which we may probably see 
the origin of S. Dionis Backchurch at the south end of Lime Street, 
just to north of the East-Cheap. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 441 

time/ it was here that the traveller from Kent or char ix. 
Gaul would still cross the Thames, and it was from The 
London that the roads still diverged which, silent cnut.° 
and desolate as they had become, furnished the^Q^^^^gg^ 
means of communication to any part of Britain.'' 
The same advantages of site, in a word, which had 
so rapidly drawn trade and population to the Roman 
Londinium, would, though in a less degree, draw 
trade and population to the English London.' 

Thouorh its growth was for a while arrested by Begin; 

1 1 1 " 1 1 TV.T 1 IT iiings of 

the early struggle with the JNorthmen, a new lite nmnidpai 
began for the city with its conquest by i^lfred. '^^' 
The most important part of his work was his resto- 
ration of its walls. Like the rest of the Roman 
town, the walls themselves had fallen into such de- 
cay that they hardly formed any obstacle to an 
assailant ; and it is thus that we hear of no opposi- 
tion to its repeated occupation by the Danes. Their 
condition, indeed, is illustrated by the fact that the 
very position of the gates must have become in 
some cases uncertain; for the Bishopsgate which 
dates from this time is considerably to the east of 
the Roman gate which it represented. The secu- 
rity, however, which was given by these walls, the 
new impulse derived from their rebuilding, and 

' The first historical proof of the existence of a bridge is in Ead- 
gar's day, when a witch was drowned there. "Da nam man 'Saet 
wif, and adrencte hi set Lundenbricge." — Cod. Dip. 591. 
^ See Making of England, pp. 103, 104. — (A. S. G.) 
^ The influence of the bishops on its early development should 
be noticed. Bishop Theodred, in his will (Thorpe, Diplomatarium, . 
p. 512), calls himself "bishop of the Lunden-wara," and this close 
association of bishop, minster, and town is seen in the gathering of 
the folk-moot at the eastern end of S. Paul's, summoned by its bell, 
as well as in the muster of the citizens in arms at the western. 



442 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. above all, the peace and prosperity won by the great 
The sovereigns who followed Alfred, are seen in the 
cnut.° rapid extension of London through the following 
1016^035 century. The " eight moneyers " whom we find 
— allotted to London by ^thelstan's laws show the 
position it already held for wealth and importance. 
Under .^thelstan, too, we find the first document 
which throws light upon its municipal and commer- 
cial life.' It is the record of a gild of a hundred 
burghers who, with the sanction of the king and 
bishop, organize themselves in groups of three, each 
with its head-man, the whole body being united un- 
der an ealdorman, with definite provisions for com- 
mon meeting and common contributions, with a 
view to the enforcement of a rough police and self- 
government. The agreement constituting this frith- 
gild is drawn up by the bishops and reeves belong- 
ing to London, and confirmed by the pledges of the 
frith-gegildas. If this, as it seems, is the act of a 
voluntary association, we have in it the first indica- 
tion of the way in which the new London was to be 
formed.' Frith-gilds such as this, church-sokes and 
lay-sokes, were growing up side by side at various 
points of the area within the walls, each with its 
separate life and jurisdiction,' but all bound together 

^ The Judicia Civitatis Lundoniae : Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 229 et 
seq. 

"^ " London, when it springs into historical Hght, is a collection of 
communities based on the lordship, the parish, and the gild ; and 
there is no reason to doubt that similar coincident causes helped 
the growth of such towns as York and Exeter." — Stubbs, Const. 
Hist. i. 107. 

^ The twelve "lawmen, habentes sacam et socam," at Lincoln, 
Stamford, and Cambridge, show a like organization in other English 
towns. So at York, " in Eboraco civitate," says Domesday, " tem- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^^^ 

by a common relation to the king's reeve, port-reeve, chap, ix. 
or wick-reeve, as well as by those beginnings of a The 
true municipal life which are to be seen In the ex- cnut.° 
istence of a common Port-mannimot, or moot of the loieToss 
burghers from all parts of the city. That this mu- 
nicipal life was furthered by and closely connected 
with the bishops of the town was shown by the fact 
that this moot was called together by the bell from 
the bell-tower of St. Paul's, and that it met in the 
space within the precinct to the eastward of the 
church. Nor is it less remarkable that when the 
•burghers gathered for purposes of war they mus- 
tered on the open space at the west end of the 
church, and marched under the banner of St. Paul.' 

It is only by conjecture that we can associate the Growth of 
gild with its ealdorman at its head, whose memory 
is preserved in the Dooms of ^thelstan, with the 
Cnichten-gild of Eadgar's day, out of which the 
later "merchant-gild" may have grown, or with the 
".lithsmen" who play so important a part in Cnut's 
day, and who seem to have conducted the inland 
traffic with Oxford and the towns along the Thames. 
Still more conjectural, perhaps, is the connection of 
this gild with the borough which grew up to the 
north of the earlier Lundon-burh, and which has left 
a trace of itself in the name of Aldermanbury, a 
name now lost in that of Cripple-gate ward. How- 
ever this may be, it is probable that it is to this pe- 
riod that we must refer the beginnings of this Eal- 
dorman-bury, as well as of the Loth-bury which lay 

pore regis Edwardi prseter scyram Archiepiscopi fuerunt sex 
scyrae." 

* Stow's London (ed. Thorns), p. 12, 



444 -^^^ CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. on the banks of the Walbrbok to the eastward, 
The though the two boroughs were still parted from one 
cnut.*' another by a space which is now represented by 

1016^35 Basing - hall ward, and were far from extending 
— northward to the wall.' But to the eastward of the 
Walbrook London must have been increasing even 
more rapidly. While western London was growing 
into the borough between the Poultry and St. Paul's, 
eastern London seems still to have remained bare 
of dwellings, save for the little group at its East- 
Cheap and the houses which fringed the lanes that 
led from the Poultry to the Bishopsgate and the 
Bridge. The most important of these was probably 
that which led up Cornhill and along our Bishops- 
gate Street to the great manors of the bishops on 
the north of the city. As Cornhill was a bishop's 
soke, it is likely that the string of dwellings which 
came to creep up its ascent, with their church of St. 
Peter in the midst of them, were due originally to 
the needs of this communication with the episcopal 
manors, while the bounds of the soke, as shown in 
those of the modern wards, prove it to have been 
originally a mere lane of houses, straggling, as we 
may suppose, through an otherwise untenanted area. 
Bishopsgate ward, which consists simply of that 
street with the houses on both sides of the road, still 
more clearly looks back to a time when the lane to 
the Gate was a mere double line of houses running 
through an area as yet unoccupied. 

Growth of But with the age of Eadgar came a time of rapid 
"trade, development which told yet more on eastern than 

' The one monument on the west side of Walbrook which we can 
certainly assign to this period is the church of St. Swithun. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 44^ 

on western London ; for the trade which we find chap. ix. 
estabHshed in the regulations of ^Ethelred' must The 
have grown up under his father's reign. The com- cnut.° 
merce with the north, which had come with the^Q^^^^gg 
Danes, was backed by a trade with the Rhineland — 
as well as by one with Normandy. " The men of 
Rouen," runs the Institute, " who came with wine 
and sturgeon, gave as dues six shillings for every 
big ship and the twentieth piece of every sturgeon. 
The men of Flanders and Ponthieu and Normandy 
and France showed their goods for sale and "paid 
toll ; so did the men of Hogge and Liege and • 
Neville ; and the Emperor's men, who came in their 
ships, were held worthy of good laws even as we." 
The seafaring vessels in which this trade was con- 
ducted, no longer able from their size to reach the 
hythe in the Walbrook, moored along the Thames 
itself at Billingsgate and Queenhythe, on whose rude 
wharves the laws show us piled a strange medley of 
goods — pepper and spices from the far East, crates 
of gloves and gray cloths, it may be from the Lom- 
bard looms, sacks of wool, the lowly forerunners of 
England's own great export in later days, iron-work 
from Liege, butts of French wine and of vinegar, 
and with them the rural products of the country 
itself — cheese, butter, lard, and eggs, with live swine 
and fovv^ls. The influence of the port at Bilhngs- 
gate was seen in the rapid peopling of eastern Lon- 
don. Houses must have been already clustering 
round the gates ; and it is probable that the district 
just within the Aid-gate,^ which was a soke in the 

' De Institutis Lundonise : Thorpe, Anc. Laws, i. 300. 
- Now represented by its ward. 



446 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. IX. 



twelfth century/ was already to some extent peopled 
The by Eadgar's day. If the tradition of the Cnichten- 
cnut. gild, at any rate, is to be trusted, and if the district 
ioieIio35. without the gate," then " desolate " from the Danish 
ravages, was given to the gild as a soke by Eadgar,' 
this would date the beginning of buildings in this 
quarter and that of the church of St. Botulf, round 
which they clustered as " the head of the soke," in his 
reign. Just to the south of this district, and occupy- 
ing the whole space between the East-Cheap and 
the Tower, is another large area now represented by 
Tower Ward. The church of All Hallows, Barking, 
near the south-eastern angle of this ward, may, as we 
have said, represent some slight gathering of people 
there on land belonging to that house at an earlier 
date, but the bulk of the area is divided between the 
parishes of St. Dunstan in the East and St. Olave's, 
Hart Street, and can therefore hardly have been 
peopled at an earlier time than the reign of Eadgar 
and ^thelred. If much of this sudden growth of 
London was due to the new trading energy, much 
was due to an actual settlement of Danes. Malmes- 
bury indeed speaks of London as having become 
half-barbarized at this time by the abundance of its 
Danish inhabitants f their influence is shown by the 
conversion of its Portmannimot into a "Husting;" 
while the churches of St. Magnus and St. Olave, at 
either end of the Bridge, suggest that the steep slope 
down to the river along which Thames Street runs 

' When it was held by Queen Matilda. 

" Our Portsoken ward. 

^ Stow's London (ed. Thorns), p. 46. 

* Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 318. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 447 

on either side Walbrook, as well as the similar slope chap, ix. 
across the water, were both peopled by Northmen at The 
about this period. It is possible, indeed, that the cnut.° 
district that lies between the present Thames Street ^Q^^ogg 
and the river was only reclaimed in the days of Cnut ; 
none of the dedications of the parishes in this region 
point to an earlier date. 

The wealth which had been brous^ht to London ^mpor- 

° . tance of 

by this rapid development of trade may be estimated London. 
by the tribute demanded from it even in the first 
year of Cnut's reign ; while the whole of England 
had to pay a Danegeld of seventy -two thousand 
pounds, the townsmen of London were taxed at ten 
thousand five hundred pounds. And with the up- 
growth of commercial activity and wealth there had 
come, as we have seen, a new political importance 
which, from the time of the later Danish wars, Lon- 
don was never again to lose. Under Cnut it became 
not only the commercial but the military centre of 
the kingdom, and soon rose to be its political centre 
as well. When the King of the West Saxons be- 
came finally, in fact as well as in name, King of all 
England, Winchester could no longer serve as the 
seat of the royal power, the capital of the larger 
State ; and the new necessities of the time led to the 
rapid rise in political importance of London, whose 
position, com.manding the highway of the Thames 
and the great lines of communication which struck 
from the chief port of the realm across the island, 
made it the natural centre of the English provinces, 
while it was no less fitted by position to become the 
centre of the great empire which Cnut was building 
up on either shore of the North Sea. 



448 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. The firm hold which Cnut had gained on Eng- 
The land during the eight years which followed his cor- 
cnut° onation, now left him free to turn to the affairs of 
1016^35 ^^^ northern realm. He was already master of Den- 
Cn'iiv'stii "^^^^' ^^t Norway had risen in revolt the year after 
grimage. his conqucst of England, 1017, and had driven out 
his nephew, Jarl Hakon, who held it in the Danish 
name. For a time Cnut took no measures of re- 
venge, but remained firm to his policy of the con- 
solidation of his power in England and Denmark. 
In 1025, however, the peace and security of his em- 
pire left him free to turn his thoughts to the asser- 
tion of his supremacy, and to make a formal de- 
mand for the submission of Norway. The mocking 
answer of its native ruler, the famous St. Olaf, was 
not followed at once by open war, but led to a train 
of negotiations in which the prudence and skill of 
Cnut showed themselves. While attempting to 
break the alliance between Sweden and Norway, 
and to spread disaffection and distrust among the 
Norwegians, he sought to strengthen his hold in 
Denmark itself by leaving as its ruler his son Har- 
thacnut, a child of seven years old, in the charge 
of his brother-in-law, Ulf. His next step showed 
the large political conceptions which ruled his ac- 
tion. The Scandinavian kingdoms had, up to this 
time, lain outside the European commonwealth, 
the terror and scourge of Western Christendom. 
Heathenism still held its ground in the forests of 
the North, and the peoples of Europe saw in the 
pirates the deadly enemies alike of their civilization 
and of their religion. Cnut's first aim was, by a 
decisive act on his own part, to bring his northern 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ..g 

kingdom into a new union with Christendom. He chap. ix. 
undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. As a West- The 
Saxon king he was, indeed, but following in the ^cnut.°^ 
steps of his predecessors for more than three hun-^Q^^gg 
dred years past, but no Danish king or jarl had ever 
yet left the shores of Denmark as a pilgrim ; and 
there was no longer any doubt as to the character 
which the young king meant to impress on the gov- 
ernment of his northern realm when, at twenty-six, 
he set sail for Rome. From the moment of his 
landing on the coast of Flanders the political char- 
acter of his journey was clearly marked, whether he 
turned aside to secure the friendship of Count Al- 
bert at Namur, or astonished Bishop Fulbert of 
Chartres by the wisdom and splendor of a king who 
had till now been in the eyes of Europe but a leader 
of heathen pirates. As he journeyed along the pil- 
grims' route, he secured, by treaties with the masters 
of the Alpine passes, safety for English merchants 
and travellers to the Papal City, and in Rome itself 
won from the Pope immunity from all tolls and 
taxes for the Saxon school which had grown up 
there. 

His political work was completed in the spring J^is Nbr/Ji- 
by his meeting at Rome with the Emperor Conrad, "'pir".^' 
when the master of the two kingdoms of Denmark 
and England was strong enough to wring from the 
Emperor the restoration of the land beyond the 
Eider which had been seized by Otto the Second, 
and to throw back the German frontier to that 
river; while a treaty was arranged for the future 
marriage of Cnut's daughter to the son of Conrad, 
afterwards the Emperor Henry III. But from his 

29 



450 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAK IX. triumphant pilgrimage Cnut returned to fresh 
The troubles at home. England, indeed, remained 
cnut.° peaceful, but Denmark had revolted in favor of the 

1016^035 child Harthacnut and the regent Ulf, and, torn by 
— civil strife, was in no state to resist the combined 
attack with which it was threatened by Norway and 
Sweden. Cnut, however, backed by the steady loy- 
alty of his English realm, and strengthened by the 
new naval power which it had developed in these 
years of prosperity, was able to make himself quick- 
ly master of Denmark and to repulse the invasion 
of the allied fleets; and in the following year, 1028, 
he sailed from England to Norway with fifty great 
ships, and drove King Olaf out of the land, over 
which he set his nephew, Hakon, as jarl. A last 
rising of the Norwegians against his power, in 1029, 
was at once stamped out, and till his death Norway 
owned his rule. 

The Scot- Lord of three realms, Cnut could now turn to the 

tish king- 
dom, last troubles that seemed to threaten him, and act 

as decisively on the borders of his English realm as 
in the northern seas. His power was shown by the 
ease with which he crushed difHculties that had 
hardly tried the resources of the earlier English 
kings. A rising of the Welsh had been checked in 
the first years of his rule by the march of an army 
on St. David's, and among the last events of his 
reign we hear of the slaying of a Welsh prince by 
the English. These later years were marked, too, 
by his action in putting an end to the dangers 
which sprang from the new attitude of the Scottish 
kings. We have already seen how the political re- 
lations of the Scots with their southern neighbors 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^ r i 

had been affected by the action of the Danes, chap, ix. 
Pressed between the Norse jarls settled in Caith- The 
ness and the Danelaw of central England, the Scot c-nut." 
kings were glad to welcome the friendship of Wes-jQ^^^gg 
sex ; but with the conquest by the house of Alfred — 
of the Danelaw, and the extension of the new Eng- 
lish realm to their own southern border, their dread 
of English ambition became in its turn greater than 
their dread of the Dane. In the battle of Brunan- 
burh the Scot king Constantine fought side by side 
with the Northmen against ^thelstan. Eadmund's 
gift of southern Cumbria showed the price which the 
English kings set upon Scottish friendship. The 
district was thenceforth held by the heir of the 
Scottish crown, and for a time at least the policy 
of conciliation seems to have been successful, for 
the Scots proved Eadred's allies in his wars with 
Northumbria. But even as allies they were still - 
pressing southward on the English realm. Across 
the Forth lay the English Lowlands, that northern 
Bernicia which had escaped the Danish settlement 
that changed the neighboring Deira into a part of 
the Danelaw. It emerged from the Danish storm 
as English as before, with a line of native ealdor- 
men who seem to have inherited the blood of its 
older kings. Harassed as the land had been, and 
changed as it was from the Northumbria of Bceda 
or Cuthbert, Bernicia was still a tempting bait to 
the clansmen of the Scottish realm. 

One important post was already established on its'cvjn- 
Northumbrian soil. Whether by peaceful cession Norhem 
on Eadred's part or no, the border fortress of Edin- 
burgh passed during his reign into Scottish hands. 



452 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. It is uncertain if the grant of Lothian by Eadgar 
The followed the acquisition of Edinburgh ; but at the 
cnut.° close of his reign the southward pressure of the 

loieToss Scots was strongly felt. " Raids upon Saxony " are 
marked by the Pictish chronicle among the deeds of 
King Kenneth ; and amidst the troubles of yEthel- 
red's reign a Scottish host swept the country to the 
very gates of Durham. But Durham was rescued 
by the sword of Uhtred, and the heads of the slain 
marauders were hung by their long, twisted hair 
round its walls. The raid and the fight were mem- 
orable as the opening of a series of descents which 
were from this time to form much of the history of 
the north. Cnut was hardly seated on the throne 
when in 1018 the Scot king, Malcolm, made a fresh 
inroad on Northumbria, and the flower of its nobles 
fell fighting round Earl Eadwulf in a battle at Car- 
ham, on the Tweed. For a time the blow passed 
unavenged, and it was not till 103 1 that Cnut was 
forced by fi-esh outbreaks to march upon the Scots. 
The might of the great conqueror must have been 
overwhelming, for Malcolm submitted without a 
battle ; but his pledge to become Cnut's " man " 
seems to have been part of a political arrangement 
by which the possession of his conquests was con- 
firmed to the Scottish king, and by which the north- 
ern half of the old Northumbrian kingdom became 
henceforth part of the Scottish realm. 

Its results. pg^ gaius havc told more powerfully on the po- 
litical character of a kingdom than this. King of 
western Dalriada, king of the Picts, lord of Cum- 
bria, the Scot king had till now been ruler only of 
Gaelic and Cymric peoples. "Saxony," the land of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 453 

the English across the Forth, had been simply a chap^ix. 
hostile frontier — the land of an alien race — whose The 
rule had been felt in the assertion of Northumbrian ^cnut.** 
supremacy and West-Saxon over-lordship. Now ior^Q^~Q^^ 
the first time Malcolm saw Englishmen among his 
subjects. Lothian, with its Northumbrian farmers 
and seamen, became a part of his dominions. And 
from the first moment of its submission it was a 
most important part. The wealth, the civilization, 
the settled institutions, the order of the English ter- 
ritory won by the Scottish king, placed it at the 
head of the Scottish realm. The clans of Cantyre 
or of the Highlands, the Cymry of Strathclyde, fell 
into the background before the stout farmers of 
northern Northumbria. The spell drew the Scot 
king, in course' of time, from the very land of the 
Gael. Edinburgh, an English town in the English 
territory, became ultimately his accustomed seat. 
In the midst of an English district the Scot kings 
gradually ceased to be the Gaelic chieftains of a 
Gaelic people. The process at once began which 
was to make them Saxons, Englishmen in tongue, 
in feeling, in tendency, in all but blood. Nor was 
this all. The gain of Lothian brought them into 
closer political relations with the English crown. 
The loose connection which the king of Scots and 
Picts had acknowledged in owning Eadward the 
Elder as father and lord, had no doubt been drawn 
tighter by the fealty now owed for the fief of Cum- 
bria. But Lothian was English ground, and the 
grant of Lothian made the Scot king " man " of the 
English king for that territory, as Earl Eadwulf was 
Cnut's "man" for the land to the south of it. So- 



454 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. cial influences, political relations, were henceforth 
The to draw the two realms together; but it is in the 
cS.° cession of Lothian that the process really began. 

1016^035 -^^ ^^^ moment this settlement of the north was 
~ chiefly important as freeing Cnut's hands to deal 

Mtheiiugs with dangers which were now gathering in the 
mandy. south. The policy by which yEthelred had de- 
tached Normandy from its old association with the 
Danes was at last bearing fruit. Of the line of 
Cerdic, none remained to dispute Cnut's throne 
save the two sons of Eadmund Ironside, who had 
found a distant refuge in Hungary, and their uncles, 
the sons of y^thelred by his second marriage with 
Emma, the ^thelings y^lfred and Eadward. From 
the time of their father's flight from England these 
had remained at the Norman court, and though in 
wedding Emma anew to Cnut, Richard the Good 
virtually pledged himself to give no Norman aid to 
his nephews' claims, their presence at Rouen was 
still a check on the English king. Children as they 
were of Emma, and bred up from childhood at the 
ducal court, the two ^Ethelings seemed, to every 
Norman, members of the ducal house and Normans 
like themselves; and from after- events we see how 
readily the Norman knighthood would have followed 
them in any effort to gain the English crown. 
Every day made the chance of such an attack a 
more formidable danger; for not only was Norman- 
dy growing fast in population and military power, 
but the energy of its people was already in secret 
revolt against the peaceful system of their dukes. 
The duchy was seething with hot-blooded soldiers, 
longing for enterprise, as well as envious of the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



455 



Danes who put into their harbors with booty won chap. ix. 
on English ground; and an occasional march to aid The 
the Parisian king, or to avenge a wrong offered by cnut.° 
the Burgundian duke, or to drive off neighbor ^^^^35 
princes from the border, was all that Richard's — 
peaceful reign offered in the way of outer warfare, 
while his stern hand crushed roughly out all chance 
of disorder at home. Little by little, therefore, the 
old northern spirit of wandering and venturing 
found outlets elsewhere. Roger de Toesny led a 
troop of warriors to Spain, and some Norman pil- 
grims in Apulia grew fast into a war-band which 
was to change the destinies of southern Italy. 

Ensfland offered a nearer field for adventure than Robert the 

c? ^ Devil. 

Italy or Spain ; and, wedded as he was to a Norman 
wife, Cnut must have watched jealously the temper 
of the Norman people through the reigns of Rich- 
ard the Good and of his son and successor, Richard 
the Third. The danger which he dreaded at last 
actually fronted him on the accession of Robert — 
Robert the Devil, as men called him in after-time — 
who became duke of Normandy on his brother's 
death in 1028. The land was now ringing with the 
marvellous victories over Greek or Moslem which 
Normans were winning in far - off fields ; poor 
knights and younger sons, sick of peace and good 
order, were streaming off, in band after band, over 
Alps and Pyrenees ; and the restless temper of his 
people stirred the blood in the veins of their duke. 
From the first Robert showed his warlike activity, 
crushing revolt within his duchy, bringing Brittany 
back into submission, restoring Count Baldwin to 
power in Flanders, and seating King Henry, in the 



456 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^ix. face of all opposition, on the French throne. But 
The France offered no such scope for greed and ambi- 
cS.° tion as the land over the Channel. England was 
1016^35 i^earer than Spain or Apulia, and the title of the 
sons of ^thelred gave a fair pretext for attack. 
We are left to Norman writers for the incidents of 
the quarrel, and we know nothing of its cause, or of 
the grounds which induced Robert to set aside the 
claims of his sister and of the child she had borne- 
to Cnut. But if greed and ambition were strong 
enough to set these aside, the claim.s of the sons of 
^thelred, who were equally akin to him, gave Rob- 
ert a fair pretext for attack. The Norman baron- 
age at once backed him in his plan of invasion, and 
the duke set sail with the eldest of the two yEthel- 
ings — Alfred. 

William That Robert's fortune would have been that of 

the N'or- 

man. thc later conqueror may well be doubted. Cnut 
was at the height of his power, and the one chance 
of success against him lay in an English rising 
which might have welcomed the ^theling. But 
contest there was to be none. Robert's project 
broke down before the obstacle which had so often 
foiled attacks on the English shore ; for a storm 
carried the Norman fleet down the Channel, and 
flung it, wrecked, on the coast of Jersey. It may 
have been the bitterness of this failure which drove 
the duke from his throne. Pilgrimages to the Sep- 
ulchre of Christ were now growing common in Nor- 
mandy, and Robert announced his purpose of going 
as pilgrim to the Holy Land. But some prevision 
of the doom which awaited him drove the duke to 
name his successor ere he left. Claimants of the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. .cy 

duchy there were In plenty, whether of the stock of chap. ix. 
Richard the Fearless or of the stock of Richard the ' The " 
Good. Child of his own, Robert had but one. In ^cnut.°* 
the little dell which parts the two cliffs', the two j^j^gl^Qag 
"fells" which have given their name to Falaise, one — 
may still hear the chatter of the women who wash 
their linen at the brook. One of such a group — a 
tanner's daughter of the town — had caught the light 
fancy of Robert and became the mother of his boy. 
At the moment of the child's birth the gossips 
noted the sturdy grasp with which his fingers seized 
and held the straws scattered on the floor. He 
would be no Norman, they laughed, to let go what 
once he had gripped. The laugh proved a true 
prophecy, but none of the laughers knew how 
mighty a prize that hand was in after-days to grip. 
It was this boy, William, whom the duke forced his 
barons to choose as their future lord ere he left the 
land which he was never to see again; for after a 
few months' stay he died on his return at Nicaea in 
July, 1035. The news of his death set Normandy 
on fire. The boy-duke was a child and a bastard, 
scorned for age as for shame of birth by the haughty 
lords whom the upgrowth of feudalism had made 
powers in the land. Even the dukes before him had 
found it hard to secure peace and order in a coun- 
try which was filled with turbulent nobles, and whose 
people had still the wild northern blood, with its love 
of lawless outbreak stirring in their veins. " Nor- 
mans must be trodden down and kept under foot," 
sang one of their poets, " and he who bridles them 
may use them at his need." But no child-duke could 
bridle them. The great border nobles held William's 



458 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. IX. rule at defiance. On every height and mound rose 
The square keeps of solid stone, which helped their build- 
cnut." ers to hold the child-duke at bay. The land became 

1016^035 ^ chaos of bloodshed and anarchy, while William 
saw his friends murdered beside him, and was driven 
from refuge to refuge by foes who sought his life. 

Death of That the boy whose reisfn beo^an in this wild 
storm was to tear England from the grasp of the 
Dane and to hold the land at his will, Cnut could 
not know. What he saw was the drifting away of 
the danger to his throne from the ^thelings across 
the Channel. From a boy-duke of eight years old, 
from this chaotic Normandy, small aid could come 
to the sons of -^thelred. But it was at the moment 
when his last difficulty vanished that Cnut's vigor 
suddenly gave way. Long and eventful as his reign 
had been, he was still only a man of forty when he 
died, in November, 1035, leaving his work all un- 
finished. The empire he had built up at once fell 
to pieces at the tidings of his death. Norway threw 
off the Danish yoke by driving out Cnut's son, 
Swein, and chose as king the child Magnus, son of 
Olaf, while Swein fled to Denmark to share the 
kingdom with his brother Harthacnut, till his death 
a few months after. For years to come Hartha- 
cnut's energies were wholly absorbed in guarding 
Denmark from the danger of Norwegian invasion, 
and his treaty with Magnus, that if either of the 
kings died childless his dominions should pass to 
the other, showed the insecurity of the house of 
Cnut even in Denmark itself. The kingdom of 
England which was to have fallen to Harthacnut by 
his father's will, and, doubtless, was to have carried 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



459 



with it the over -lordship of the whole empire, lay chap, ix. 
beyond the reach of the hardly - pressed ruler of The 
Denmark ; it was claimed by another son of Cnut, cnut.° 
Harald, and itself fell asunder into two parts. AjQj~Q3g 
tragic fate, too, av/aited the house of Cnut. Be- — 
fore seven years were past the same weakness which 
had cut short his own life had carried off his four 
children, not one of them having reached twenty- 
four years of age, and all childless save Gunhild, the 
wife of the German, Henry III., whose only child 
became a nun. The race of Gorm in the direct line 
of descent thus became extinct in little more than a 
hundred years after he had finished his work of the 
creation of the Danish kingdom. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE HOUSE OF GODWINE. 
1035-1053. 

Positiofiof The death of Cnut left Godwine the greatest 
" poHtical power in the land. For years he had stood 
second only to the king in his English realm; as 
Earl of Wessex he was master of the wealthiest and 
most powerful portion of the kingdom ; and Cnut's 
absences on foreign campaigns had accustomed 
Englishmen to look on Godwine as the real centre 
of administrative government. The will of Cnut, 
that he should be succeeded by Harthacnut in the 
English kingdom and the over-lordship of his north- 
ern realms, embodied no doubt not the king's pur- 
pose only, but that of the minister who had been his 
chief counsellor for fifteen years past, and repre- 
sented that connection with the North, that main- 
tenance of a Scandinavian empire, which was as yet 
the policy of Godwine as it had been the policy of 
the king. For English as was his blood, and Eng- 
lish as his policy was to become in later days, God- 
wine can have shared but little the general drift of 
English feeling against the Dane. As yet, indeed, 
he must have seemed to Englishmen more Dane 
than Englishman. He had risen through the favor, 
he had guided the counsels, of a Danish conqueror. 
His renown as a warrior had been won in Danish 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^51 

wars. He was wedded to a wife of Danish blood, chap. x. 
and his two eldest children, Swein and Harold, bore The 
the Danish names of Cnut's elder boys. It was Go°dwiiie. 
no wonder, therefore, that he supported, on Cnut's ^Q3^Qg3 
death, the continuance of that union of England — 
with Denmark which Harthacnut's succession se- 
cured. 

But the internal policy of both kino: and minis- Godwme's 

... . policy. 

ter had made their outer policy impossible. Their 
whole system of government and administration had 
nursed English feeling into a new and vigorous life. 
To England Cnut had been an English king. If 
he had ruled other lands it was from Winchester, 
as dependencies of his English crown. The very 
Danes who had settled in England had learned 
through his long and peaceful reign to look on 
themselves as Englishmen, and on Denmark as a 
foreign land. But Harthacnut had scarcely been 
seen in England ; from early childhood he had been 
trained in Denmark as its kino- and it misrht well 
be thought that his rule meant the rule of England 
from a Danish throne. If the influence of Godwine 
and the Lady Emma at Winchester was strong 
enough to hold the West-Saxon earldom true to the 
claims of Harthacnut, the rest of England called for 
a national king. In pleading for the succession of 
Harthacnut, Godwine doubtless seemed to the peo- 
ple at large to be pleading for Danish rule. To his 
fellow earls he seemed no doubt pleading for his 
own, and political rivalry united with national feel- 
ing in urging Earl Leofric of Mercia to withstand 
him. It marks the hold which Cnut's greatness had 
given him on the affections of Englishmen, that even 



462 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARx. in setting aside Harthacnut they showed no will to 

The set aside his father's line. Not a cry was raised 

Go°dwine. ^or the children of ^thelred. Cnut's death, indeed, 

1035T053 ^^^^ ^^ once been followed by a descent of the 

— y^theling Eadward with forty Norman ships at 

Southampton, but the attack had failed, and its 

failure was decisive. 

^arnjd jt ^as Cnut's elder son, Harald — " Harefoot," as 

Harejoot. . . 

he was called for his swiftness of foot — who, Dane as 
he was, at any rate represented an England separate 
from Denmark, that Leofric and the " lithsmen," a 
merchant-gild of London, called to the throne. The 
hus-carls of the dead king were still with Emma at 
Winchester, and a word from Godwine would have 
plunged England into war. But warrior as he had 
shown himself in earlier days, it is the noblest trait 
in the character of Godwine throughout his political 
career that he shrank from civil bloodshed. The 
Witan gathered at Oxford to decide the question of 
the succession ; Leofric demanded a division of the 
realm, and stubborn as was Godwine's resistance, 
he yielded at last to the doom of his fellow nobles. 
For the moment, indeed, his influence, and it may 
be dread of the dead king's hus-carls, saved his own 
earldom, which was suffered to remain faithful to 
Harthacnut; but the rest of England took Harald 
for its king. 
Division It was, howcvcr, impossible that such a division 

of Eng- 

land, of the realm could last long. The strife which had 
again broken the land into two parts was indeed 
the renewal of the old contest between Wessex and 
the rest of England; but the new attitude of London 
marked a decisive and important change. From 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



463 



the moment that London sided, not with Wessex chap. x. 
but with England, the relation of parties was altered, The 
and the ultimate victory of the national will over GoTwine. 
provincial jealousies could be no longer doubtful. ^^3^052 
If the new division of England between two claim- — 
ants recalled the compromise of Olney, there was 
still a significant difference. It was the king of the 
joint Mercian and Northumbrian realms who was 
now over-lord, while the West-Saxon ruler sank to 
the position of under-king. Such a settlement struck 
a hard blow at the authority of Earl Godwine. Un- 
der Cnut he had been second only to the king in 
his power over all England ; with a stranger such 
as Harthacnut he would have ruled supreme. But 
Leofric's action limited his power to Wessex, and 
even in Wessex it would seem as if Emma was a 
formidable rival, for if, as is stated, she had been 
already robbed by Harald of Cnut's treasure, she 
still preserved Cnut's body of hus-carls round her at 
Winchester. The continued absence of Hartha- 
cnut, too, who was still held in Denmark, weakened 
Godwine's position. Even in his own earldom 
men's minds turned from the absent to the present 
king; and it would seem that public feeling was 
wholly against Godwine's policy, for the Chronicle 
says "the cry was then greatly in favor of Harald." 

So difficult, indeed, was his position in Wessex, ^^"''^-^^ c/" 

1 • 1 1 71^ 1 T r ^ -Alfred. 

that it woke the A^thehngs over sea to a fresh 
attempt. It may be that Emma, hopeless of in- 
ducing Harthacnut to take possession of his West- 
Saxon kingdom, had turned to the children she had 
so long forgotten in Normandy. It was at any rate 
in peaceful guise, and with the pretext of visiting 



464 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. his mother, that ./Elf red, the younger ^thehng. 
The landed with a train of Normans at Dover, and rode 
GoTwine. through Surrey towards Winchester. He may have 
1035T053 hop^d that the old West-Saxon loyalty would spring 
— into fresh life as he neared the West-Saxon capital ; 
but whatever was his purpose it was ended by a 
brutal deed. At Guildford he was seized, carried 
over the Thames to Harald Harefoot, and by Har- 
ald's orders blinded, and left to die among the 
monks at Ely, while the Normans who followed 
him were put to the sword or sold for slaves. Even 
among Englishmen the cruel act was followed by a 
thrill of horror. " Viler deed was never done in 
this land since Dane came here," sang an English 
minstrel. Over sea it kindled among the Normans 
a thirst for vengeance which never ceased till the 
day of Senlac ; and justly or unjustly, the Norman 
hate centred itself on Godwine. What his part in 
the matter had been it is hard to tell. Whether or 
not the seizure was made by Godwine's men is a 
matter of doubt, but it was made in Godwine's earl- 
dom ; and the success of Alfred would have over- 
thrown Godwine's power. So general was the con- 
viction that the deed lay at his door, that in the 
next reign the earl was charged with the guilt by 
Archbishop ^Ifric, and forced to purge himself 
solemnly of the charge by oath before the altar. 
But though Godwine was acquitted by the Witan 
of the charge of betrayal, his oath weighed little 
with yElfred's kindred. Emma believed that it was 
the earl who had given up her son, and Eadward 
looked on him as his brother's murderer. It was 
no wonder that throughout the length and breadth 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



465 



of Normandy men held that the blood of Alfred, chap, x. 
and of the Normans who followed him, rested upon The 

/"> 1 • 11*1 House of 

Godwme and his house. Godwine. 

The political action of the earl after the rnurder^Qg^Qgg 
Sfave streno^th to the Norman belief. Godwine's ,— . 

1 r 111 11 TT'-n Siibmisston 

loss of power had already been great. His influence of God- 
was now bounded by Wessex, and even in Wessex '^'"^' 
it was seriously threatened. The compromise which 
reserved southern England to Harthacnut had every 
hour grown more impossible ; men wearied of wait- 
ing for a king who never came, and it seemed as if 
Wessex had to choose between submission to Har- 
ald Harefoot, or a rising in favor of the line of 
Cerdic. But Godwine had as yet no mind to aban- 
don the house of Cnut, though it seems as if despair 
of Harthacnut's coming was already swaying him 
to the side of Harald when yElfred landed. His 
landing precipitated a change of policy which had 
already become inevitable, and the murder made 
further hesitation impossible. It was the alliance 
with Emma which had enabled the earl to hold 
Wessex for Harthacnut, and now that Emma was 
parted from him by her belief in his guilt, Godwine 
was forced from the position he had held so stub- 
bornly. A new Witenagemot was gathered in 1037 
to receive his submission. Emma was driven from 
the country, Harthacnut was forsaken by the earl 
and the men of Wessex, "for that he was too long 
in Denmark," and Harald became king over all the 
land. 

Godwine remained Earl of W^essex. But if he ^^''^^'«- 
had forsaken Harthacnut, Emma was still faithful 
to her son. She seems to have cared little for 

30 



466 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. her children by ^thelred, whom she had not seen 
The since their boyhood, and to have concentrated her 
Godwine. love on her younger children by Cnut. When 
1035^053 ^^^^ sentence of the Witenagemot, therefore, drove 
— her from Winchester, she took refuge not in Nor- 
mandy, which was now backing the ^theling Ead- 
ward, but in Flanders. Her temper was active as 
of old. From " Baldwin's land " her messengers 
again pressed Harthacnut to strike a blow for his 
heritage; and in the winter of 1039 he sailed to 
Flanders to devise plans with his mother for a great 
invasion, and returned to the north at the opening 
of spring to put himself at the head of the fleet 
which he was preparing. But death had already 
removed his rival. In March, 1040, Harald Hare- 
foot died at Oxford, and was carried to Westminster 
for burial. When Harthacnut touched at Bruges 
with his fleet he was met by the news that the 
English Witan had chosen him for their king ; and 
in the following June he landed peacefully at Sand- 
wich, with the fleet of sixty vessels which had been 
gathered for the conquest of the kingdom. The 
fierce vengeance of the young sovereign, it may be 
of Emma, tore up his predecessor's body from its 
resting-place and flung it into a fen. Godwine 
again found himself in hard straits. He had to 
clear himself by solemn oath of the charge of be- 
trayal of -Alfred brought against him by Archbishop 
JEiric. All memory of the stand he had made for 
the succession of Harthacnut was lost in the fresher 
memory of his submission to Harald. But costly 
gifts enabled him to retain his earldom through 
Harthacnut's reign. The two years of the young 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 467 

kings rule were marked by little save heavy taxa- ciiarx. 
tion for payment of the Danish host which was to The 
have won back England, and by the stern suppres- Godwine. 
sion of resistance - to this Danegeld at Worcester. 1035I1053. 
Discontent would probably have passed into revolt, 
had not the certainty of his approaching end turned 
men's minds to the yEtheling Eadward. The rise 
1 of a new sympathy for the house of Cerdic had 
\ been seen in the charge brought against Godwine, 
' and the misrule of Harald and Harthacnut had ren- 
dered the succession of another Dane impossible. 
Even Harthacnut turned to his mother's son ; and 
ere he died Eadward was summoned by the king 
himself from his refuge in Normandy, and recog- 
nized as heir to the throne. 

A halo of tenderness spread in after-time round ^^'''f. 
this last king of the old English stock. Legend Eadward. 
told of his pious simplicity, his blitheness and gen- 
tleness of mood, the holiness that won him in after- 
time his title of Confessor, and enshrined him as 
a saint in the abbey church at Westminster. His 
was the one figure that stood out bright against the 
darkness when England lay trodden underfoot by 
Norman conquerors ; and so dear became his mem- 
ory that liberty and independence itself seemed in- 
carnate in his name. Instead of freedom, the sub- 
jects of William or Henry called for the " good laws 
of Eadward the Confessor." But it was, in fact, as 
a mere shadow of the past that the exile returned 
to the land that had cast him out in his childhood. 
His blue eyes and flaxen hair, indeed, were those of 
his race, but the fragile form, the delicate complex- 
ion, the transparent, womanly hands of Eadward 



458 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. told that no great warrior or ruler was to mount 
The in him the throne of yEthelstan and Eadgar. He 
Godwine. was a Stranger, too, in the realm. Thirty years had 
1035^053 Passed since the child had been driven from Eng- 
— lish shores, and, save in his fruitless descent on 
Southampton, he had never touched them since. 
He had grown to manhood at the Norman court. 
His memories were not of the father who had died 
in his childhood, or of the mother who had forsaken 
him through long years of exile, but of the Norman 
dukes who had sheltered him, of his uncle, Richard 
the Good, of his cousins, Richard and Robert, of 
Robert's son, William, the young kinsman who was 
battling with a storm of rebellion and treachery in 
the land which Bad ward loved. In all but name, 
indeed, he was a Norman. He spoke the Norman 
tongue ; he used, in Norman fashion, a seal for 
his charters ; his sympathies lay naturally with the 
friends of his Norman life. The Englishmen among 
whom he found himself when Harthacnut summon- 
ed him to his court were all strangers to him, and 
the shy, timid exile of forty had neither Cnut's tem- 
per nor Cnut's youth to enable him to throw him- 
self into new associations. It is characteristic of 
Eadward's sympathies that, ailing as his half-brother 
was, he seems again to have quitted England after 
his recognition as heir to the crown, and to have 
been still in Normandy in the summer of 1042, 
when Harthacnut " died as he stood at his drink " 
at a marriage feast in Lambeth. 
Coronation It was not, indeed, till the Easter-tide of 1043 ^hat 

of Eud' , Y 

-ward. Eadward saw himself crowned at Winchester by the 
two archbishops as English king. The months that 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^^g 

lay between this crowning and the death of his pred- charx. 
ecessor had probably been months of busy negotia- The 
tion with the English nobles, and above all with Go°Sne. 
the Earl of Wessex. For jealously as he had been 1035I7053 
looked on by Harthacnut, Godwine was still the 
greatest power in the land. Earl Siward was hard- 
ly settled in his distant Northumbria, and the mu- 
tilated Mercia of Leofric could not vie in extent or 
power with the great West-Saxon earldom. Wealth, 
character, political experience, the memory of his 
long supremacy under Cnut, and of his personal 
sway for two years over Wessex after Cnut's death, 
as well as a sense of the skill and daring with 
which he had faced and lived through the ill-will 
of Harald and the hatred of Harthacnut, gave God- 
wine in fact at this moment a weight beyond that 
of any other Englishman. Nor did it seem likely 
that this weight would be thrown on Eadward's side. 
The great house to which his wife belonged seems 
to have clung almost as closely to the earl as his 
own sons. Two of her brother Ulf's children, Beorn 
and Osbeorn, were in England at this time, and 
closely linked to the earl, while their elder brother, 
Swein Estrithson, as he was called, was fighting in 
the northern seas for the crown of Denmark. But 
at the news of Harthacnut's death Swein sailed back 
to England to claim a crown which seemed easier 
to win. Kinship, gratitude, political tradition alike 
seemed to sway Godwine to Swein's side, both in 
his claims to the Danish and the English thrones. 
The earl owed all to Cnut, and Swein was not only 
his own wife's nephew, but he was Cnut's sister's 
son, and nearest in blood, now Harthacnut was dead, 



470 



THE CONgUEST OF ENGLAND. 



cHAP.x. to the king who had raised Godwine to the power 
The he held. His support of Cnut's will, his fidelity to 

Godwine. Harthacnut, show that three years before Godwine 
1035T053. had looked to a union of the crowns of England 
and Denmark as of high political value, and such a 
union might easily have been brought about by the 
crowning of Swein, and his return to the North 
with a force of Englishmen. But whatever may 
have been the strength of Godwine's family sym- 
pathies, he must soon have seen that it was impos- 
sible to indulo^e them. As in his stubborn effort to 
secure half England for Harthacnut, Godwine found 
himself face to face with the will of a whole people. 
The worthlessness of Cnut's children had wiped out 
the memory of Cnut's greatness and wisdom. It 
was, indeed, the very policy of Cnut, the English 
and national character of his rule, which had roused 
into new and stronger life the national conscious- 
ness of Englishmen — a consciousness which now 
expressed itself in the sudden assertion of their will 
to have no stransfer to rule over them but one of 
their own royal stock. Before King Harthacnut 
was buried, says the chronicle, " all folk chose Ead- 
ward for their king." 

state of That there was still dispute among the nobles at 
dy. the Witenagemot shows that the acclamation of the 
people found fierce opposition ; while the assertion of 
Swein Estrithson in after-days that his claim was 
bought off by a promise of the crown should he out- 
live his rival, points to intricate negotiations before 
Eadward was accepted by all. The negotiations 
may have been aided in some measure by pressure 
from the Norman court. The earlier troubles of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



471 



the young duke's reign were now settling down, chap, x. 
and under the guardianship of Ralf of Wacey the The 
Norman baronage was brought back into a partial Godwine. 
obedience, and the pacification of Normandy was^gg^Q^j^ 
aided by a movement which fell in with the relig- 
ious excitement of the time. In the universal dis- 
order which raged over feudal Gaul, men turned to 
the Church as the one body which had preserved 
some sense of its duty to save men from oppression 
and bloodshed. Anarchy had been worst in the 
south, and from the south came a reaction against 
it. The bishops and abbots of Aquitaine met in 
synod to bid men lay aside their arms, to denounce 
the warfare and robbery about them, and to proclaim 
a " Truce of God." As the preachers preached 
this new gospel the crowds they gathered stretched 
out their hands to heaven with shouts of " Peace ! 
Peace !" The " Covenant " spread like fire through 
southern and eastern France, but the first zeal of 
its preachers had to content itself with more mod- 
erate demands on human passion before it could 
penetrate to the west, and the universal peace dwin- 
dled to a suspension of arms from the sunset of 
Wednesday to the sunrise of the following Monday. 
Even this proved too hard a doctrine for Norman 
ears. But a tim.ely famine backed its advocates 
with signs of the wrath of God, and the duke 
pressed the truce on his subjects. A great council 
of nobles and prelates, gathered at Caen in 1042, 
enacted that for four days and five nights in every 
week men should be free from dread of wound or 
death, and castle and borough and village from 
dread of attack. 



472 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP.X. The " Truce," well kept or ill, aided the young 
Tiie duke's efforts to restore order in the land. William 

Go°dwiii°e. vvas no longer the mere child whom his father left 

1035T05S. behind him. Young as he was, and he was still not 
~ fifteen, he must have been already showino- sio-ns of 

fr/,v/,;w. the huge stature, the giant-like strength, which lifted 
him in after-days out of the common herd of men. 
From boyhood he was a mighty hunter, and the 
twang of tlu-' bow that no arn^ but his could wield 
was heard in the Norman woodlands. The temper, 
too, which marked his later years was ripening un- 
der the stress of his eventful history. No boy ever 
had a rougher training. Friends had been hewn 
down or poisoned beside him, and he had been 
driven from refuge to refuge bv foes who would 
have slain him if they could. The watchfulness, 
the patience, the cunning, which lav througlunit his 
life side by side with a might}' energv and an awful 
wrath in William s temper, had their first upgrowth 
in these earl}^ days of peril ; and with them must 
have been already awakening, under the same pres- 
sure, that political sense, that wide outlook and 
clearness of vision, which lifts William so high 
above the statesmen of his time. 

Eaihoani gyt cvcu if the vouuo; dukc himsclf had looked 

it ti a A or- ...... ■ ^ 

maiiJy. With indifteivnce on the fortunes of a kinsman 
whom he had known from his childhood, the svm- 
pathies of his nobles would have been with one 
whom they looked upon as himself almost a Nor- 
man; and if we set aside the Norman boast that 
England at this juncture yielded to the threats of 
the court of Rouen, we may take the boast at least 
as an indication that the intiuence of that court was 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^7^ 

used to support the claim of Eadward. Even after chap.x. 
his recognition as king, this influence must still The 
have been employed in overcoming his fears. Ead- Godwine. 
ward seems to have hung back from the crown. ^^^3577053 
The men among whom he was to go were strangers — 
to him and worse than strangers. Those who were 
to be his counsellors had been the counsellors of 
kings who had long held from him the throne of his 
race. Those who were to be his warriors were the 
men who had but a year before driven off his fleet 
from Southampton. The memory of his brother's 
murder hung about him, rankling in his mind, as 
we shall see, for years ; and the most powerful of 
the earls who called him to the English throne was 
the man whose hands he believed to be red with 
his brother's blood. If the Norman story be true, 
it was not till hostages for his safety had been sent 
to the court at Rouen that Eadward would consent 
to cross the seas. When he landed on the shores of 
his new realm he brought with him a train that 
showed his reliance on Norman support. In later 
days William asserted that his cousin, prescient of 
his coming childlessness, had promised in the fash- 
ion which was getting common in the northern 
States, and of which there had been many instances 
among the Danish kings, to bequeath his realm to 
him on his death. That this was so is likely enough, 
though the bequest was one which English nobles 
were hardly likely to recognize. But in any case 
the young duke must have seen the shadow of his 
after-conquest falling over England, as its new king 
sailed from Norman shores with a train of Norman 
knights and Norman churchmen. Foremost among 



474 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR X. these in rank was Eadward's nephew, Ralf, a son of 
The his sister Godgifu, by her Norman marriage with 

GoXine. Drogo of Mantes. Another Norman kinsman, Odo 
1035^053.^^ Odda, was probably in his train; and Richard, 
the son of Scrob, may have been among the Nor- 
man knights who formed the king's guard. Two 
Norman priests, Wilham and Ulf, came as his chap- 
lains. But closer to Eadward stood one to whom 
he had owed much in his exile, and his affection 
for whom was of long standing, Robert, abbot of 
Jumieges. Robert either accompanied or soon fol- 
lowed the king to England, and was soon seen to 
possess his confidence as no other man possessed it. 

The state From tlic momcut of their landins;', however, the 

of E7lg- , , O ' 

> land, king and his group of strangers found themselves 
lonely and helpless in the land. With his accession, 
indeed, the long struggle of the ealdormen for a 
virtual independence seemed at last to have reached 
its aim. The land appeared about to break up into 
three great fiefs, as little dependent on the central 
monarchy as the fiefs of the continent. Siward 
ruled as he listed in the north, and no royal writ 
ran across the H umber. Leofric was almost as 
much his own master in Mid-Britain. Wessex, in- 
stead of giving a firm standing-ground to the house 
of Cerdic, was now in the hands of a master who 
overawed the crown. Even more than in Cnut's 
days Godwine's voice was supreme in the council- 
chamber. The policy and government were alike 
his own, and in both he showed his wonted ability. 
Without, indeed, the realm was secured from attack 
by the turn of foreign affairs, for Normandy was a 
friend to the Norman-bred king, and the strife be- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^yc 

tween Magnus of Norway and Swein Estrithson chap. x. 
for the throne of Denmark shielded England from The 
any invasion by the Northmen. Friendly embassies, GoTwine. 
too, came from the French court, while the earlier ^^3^053 
marriage of the emperor, Henry III., with Gunhild, — 
a daughter of Cnut and Emma, had linked him by 
blood to Eadward, and strengthened the friendly 
intercourse between the German and English courts 
which had gone on from the days of Eadward the 
Elder. Near home Gruffydd, the son of Llewelyn, 
was building up a formidable power over the west- 
ern border, but he was too busy as yet with his 
Welsh rivals to seem a serious danger ; while in the 
north Macbeth, who had lately risen, through the 
murder of King Duncan, to the throne of Scotland, 
showed himself a peaceful neighbor. It was rather 
within than without that Godwine's work had to be 
done, and that it was well done was proved by the 
peace of the land ; while the popularity which he 
won in Wessex shows his good government of his 
own earldom.' 

• ^ The political structure of Cnut's administration, indeed, had 
been tested by the troubles and revolutions which followed on his 
death ; and the new strength of the crown was shown in the fact 
that none of these troubles had in the least afifected that structure. 
Even the fourfold division of the English earldoms and the sever- 
ance of Wessex from the crown was retained, in spite of the return 
of the line of Wessex to the throne. Part of this, no doubt, may- 
be due to the influence of Godwine, but, in fact, the continuance of 
Godwine's power may in itself be looked upon as a proof of the 
strength of the administrative system and tradition of which he 
was the embodiment. That system remained, indeed, in all respects 
firmly established throughout the whole reign of the Confessor to 
the very conquest of the Normans. The military organization con- 
tinued unchanged, as we see later from the hus-carls quartered at 
towns like Wallingford and Dorchester ; while, from the description 



476 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. X. But however wise and successful Godwine's rule 

The might be, we shall see in years to come how bitterly 

Godwine. it was rcscntcd by the king, who found himself a pup- 

1035^53 P^^ ^^ ^^^^ hands. Eadward was, indeed, powerless 

^. — ; ^ in his realm. He could not even hope, like his pred- 

Snvara of .... 

Northum- eccssors, to suatch a fragment of authority by pit- 
ting one great noble against another. In Northum- 
bria, Siward had but just won his earldom by a deed 
of blood. By his marriage with the daughter of a 

of the new armament used by Harold in his later wars with the 
Welsh, it was clearly with this picked body of troops, and not 
with the fyrd of the neighboring shires, that he won his victories 
in south Wales ; and they formed the real strength of his army 
both at Stamford Bridge and at Senlac. Of the hoard again we 
catch a glimpse in the legend of Hugolin, which shows that the 
Danegeld, if still an unpopular tax, was yet rigidly levied, and 
formed the mainspring of the royal finance ; and in the troubles 
of Emma we see the first instance of that vital importance to the 
crown of the possession of the hoard or treasure, as well as of the 
command of the body of huscarls, whose pay was drawn from it. 
The administrative machinery, too, was not only maintained, but 
developed in the more organized form which the Royal Chapel 
assumed under Godwine and Harold, an incidental proof of which 
. is given in the adoption of the Norman practice of authenticating 
all documents issued in the king's name by the royal seal ; a step 
which created the chancellor, as the hoard had already created the 
treasurer, and as the levy of Danegeld, and the necessity of giv- 
ing formal acquittance of the sums levied under it to the sheriffs, 
must already, in however inchoate a way, have originated the sys- 
tem of the Exchequer. With the consolidation of the royal admin- 
istration no doubt there went on, also, a corresponding development 
of the royal justice, in the shape of appeals to the king himself from 
subordinate jurisdictions ; and with the growing pressure of public 
business we find that the great office which had been instituted by 
Cnut in his appointment of a secundarius, was continued under 
the Confessor in the rule of Godwine and Harold, the predecessors 
of the Norman justiciar. At the time of the Norman Conquest, 
therefore, the administrative system which has sometimes been 
called Norman was already growing up at the English court, and 
the true work of the Conqueror and his successors lay in its exten- 
sion and development. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 477 

former Northumbrian earl, Ealdred, he had, in 1038, chap.x. 
become master of Deira or Yorkshire, but Bernicia The 
had passed to Ealdred's brother, Eadwulf. Three Godwine. 
years later, however, Eadwulf was cut down at thej^g^gg 
very court of Harthacnut, by Siward, who thus, in — 
104 1, became invested with the whole Northumbrian 
earldom from H umber to Tweed. The new earl, 
with his giant stature, his Danish blood, the personal 
vigor which earned him the surname of Digera, or 
the Strong, was a fitting representative of the dis- 
trict over which he ruled. His stern, rough hand- 
ling kept the wild Northumbrians in awe ; but 
dreaded as his ruthlessness might be, it brought 
little peace or order to the land.' Northumbria, in- 
deed, stood apart from the rest of Britain. The old 
anarchy had deepened with the settlement of the 
Danes. The roads were haunted with robbers, so 
that men could hardly travel with safety even in 
companies of thirty at a time ; its distance from the 
south made the attendance of its thegns at the Wit- 
enagemots scant and uncertain ; and the visits of 
the king, which in Eadgar's day were few, seem to 
have ceased altogether under the Confessor. It was 
the home of savage feuds, of strife handed on from 
father to son, even in the house of its earls. Mar- 
riage sat as lightly on them as bloodshedding;' and 

^ " Licet dux Siwardus ex feritate judicii valde timeretur tamen 
tanta gentis illius crudelitas et Dei incultus habebatur ut vix trigin- 
ta vel viginti in uno comitatu possent ire quin aut interficerentur 
aut deprsedarentur ab insidiantiam latronum multitudine." — Vit. 
Edw. (Luard), p. 421. 

^ Earl Uhtred, who held Northumbria under ^thelred and Cnut, 
married the daughter of Bishop Ealdhun of Durham, and with her 
got a share of the bishop's lands. He sent her back, however, to 
her father, and returned her lands with her ; and took in her stead 



4^8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. the rude violence of their Hfe was unchecked even 

The by rehgion. Churches gave no sanctuary against 

Godwine^ dccds of blood, and since the conquest of the north 

1035^53 ^ "^^ burgher's daughter, whose father gave her to him on the sim- 
— pie terms that he should kill his enemy Thurbrand. But, as he 
either could not or would not kill Thurbrand, the burgher's daugh- 
ter, in time, ceased to be his wife, and he wedded -^thelred's daugh- 
ter ^Ifgifu. — Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. 80. 
And with this loose morality went savage bloodshedding, and feuds 
of vendetta handed on from father to son. If Uhtred could not kill 
Thurbrand, Thurbrand owed him no thanks for it. When Uhtred 
submitted to Cnut, and came to do homage " at a place called Wi- 
heal" (Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 376), "a curtain was drawn aside," 
and behind it stood Thurbrand with armed men, who forthwith cut 
down Uhtred and forty of his companions. The feud slumbered till 
Ealdred, Uhtred's son by the bishop's daughter, got his father's earl- 
dom. Then, whether by law or by murder, Thurbrand was slain. 
His son Carl took up the feud, and he and Earl Ealdred went about 
seeking each other's lives. Friends strove to make peace between 
them ; they were reconciled ; they became even sworn brothers (ex- 
changing blood ?) ; they vowed to go on pilgrimage to Rome togeth- 
er ; and when driven back by stress of weather, Carl invited Ealdred 
to feast at his house and hunt in his woods. There in the woqdland 
he slew him, and a stone cross on the spot recalled the crime for 
centuries after. — Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twysden), p. 81. 
The murder of his brother Eadwulf, who succeeded him in Berni- 
cia, began the fortunes of Siward. But Siward had married Eal- 
dred's daughter, and if he himself slew Ealdred's brother, the blood- 
feud with Thurb rand's house for Ealdred's death fell none the less 
to his son. Some years after the Norman conquest, as Carl's sons 
were feasting " in the house of their elder brother at Seterington in 
Yorkshire," and unarmed, a body of Earl Waltheof's young thegns 
fell suddenly upon them. "The whole family — all the sons and 
grandsons of Carl — were cut off, save one son, Sumorled, who 
chanced not to be present, and another, Cnut, whose character had 
won him such general love that the murderers could not bring 
themselves to slay him." — Freeman, Norm. Conq. iv. 525 ; Sim. Durh., 
Gest. Reg. a. 1073 ; and, more largely, De Obsess. Dunelm. (Twys- 
den), pp. 81, 82. The young thegns came back with spoil — " deletis 
fiiiis et nepotibus Carli reversi sunt multa in variis speciebus spolia 
reportantes" (Sim. Durh., De Obsess. Dunelm., Twysden, p. 82), 
while Waltheof "avi sui interfectionem gravissima clade vindica- 
vit" (Ibid. p. 81). 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^yg 

by the Danes not a single monastery of any historic chap.x. 
importance survived in the land once thronged by The 
religious houses. Northumbria, indeed, wild and Godwine. 
uncivilized as it was, gave Siward work enough to^Qg^gg 
do in simply holding it down, and as yet prevented — 
any real danger to the power of Godwine from the 
northern earl. 

Leofric of Mercia, on the other hand, had held ^'^^/^{'■■. "/ 
his earldom since the days of Cnut, and claimed to 
be descended from royal English blood. At the 
death of Cnut his influence, as we have seen, had 
been strong enough to match" the power of Godwine, 
and to bring about the division of England between 
Harald and Harthacnut ; and his importance must 
have increased with the submission of all England to 
Harald in 1037. To the' end of his life he remained 
among the foremost powers of the land, and took 
rank as one of the three great earls. In mere extent, 
however, Mercia was now but a shadow of its former 
self. Even in the days of Cnut the Hwiccas of 
Worcestershire formed a separate government ; un- 
der Harthacnut the breaking-up of Mercia was yet 
more complete. The Magesaetas of Hereford were 
gathered into a distinct earldom on the west, while 
the eastern provinces of Mercia had been shorn off 
to form a new earldom of the Middle-English of 
Leicester, with probably Nottinghamshire and Lin- 
colnshire. Some of these districts returned in later 
days to the house of Leofric, and even at this time 
they may have still owned his supremacy, but his di- 
rect rule seems to have been confined to Cheshire, 
Staffordshire, Shropshire, and the border of north 
Wales. 



480 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR X. Not only did Godwine's experience of government, 

The his wealth, his ability, lift him high above Siward or 

Godwine. Leofric, but the very earldom he held far outweighed 

1035T053. ^^^ earldoms of Mid-England or the north. Wes- 

^~. sex embraced almost all southern England, and 

Goawme . . 

of southern England was the wealthiest and most im- 
portant part of the realm. The full effects, indeed, 
of the separation of Wessex from the crown, and its 
formation into an earldom, could hardly be felt in 
Cnut's day, while all England was still but a part of 
a larger empire ; but they were felt in the days of 
the Confessor, when the hereditary king of the West- 
Saxons found him-self displaced from his own native 
realm by Godwine and his house. Eadward was 
the first descendant of Alfred w4io was not lord of 
Wessex. He had, indeed, no local hold on the land 
at all; he was simply king; and it may possibly have 
been owing to this that he found his home no long- 
er at Winchester, but at Westminster. The fact, 
indeed, that this creation of a West-Saxon earldom, 
so obviously a mere expedient to meet the exigen- 
cies of the Danish rule, was not at once reversed, 
and the old connection of Wessex with the crown 
restored on the accession of the Confessor, shows 
how absolutely powerless that king was, from the 
first, in the hands of Earl Godwine. Nor could Ead- 
ward look to either of the rival earls for aid in dis- 
puting with the all-powerful Godwine the mastery 
of his kingdom. And yet, by a singular irony of 
fate, it was just through this mastery of Godwine's 
that England remained a kingdom at all. Had the 
three earldoms been of equal weight, or their pos- 
sessors men of the same temper, the energies of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



481 



Godwine, as of his fellow-earls, might have been chap, x. 
spent in the building-up of a separate dominion. It The 
was his superiority of power as well as his keener GodwLe. 
ambition that drew him from the mere establish- jQg^ogg 
ment of a great fief to the larger ambition of ruling — 
the land. 

With such an aim the earl saw that his profit lay ^'-^ M'^-''- 
not in weakening or annihilating the authority of the 
crown, but in seizing that authority for his own pur- 
poses, and in paving the way, by a dexterous use of 
Eadward, for the succession of the house of Godwine 
to the throne. Such a design can alone account 
for the steady policy of annexation by which he at 
once began to draw all England into his own hands 
or those of his kindred. The importance of keeping 
watch over Wales, and of preserving the means of 
communication with it as Gruffydd built up a na- 
tional sovereignty, may explain the establishment of 
Godwine's eldest son, Swein, in the border-district of 
Hereford. But a new earldom was created for him 
by the addition to this district of two other Mercian 
shires, the shires of Oxford and Gloucester; and 
this earldom was again swelled by the detachment 
of Berkshire and Somerset from Godwine's own 
Wessex. The position of Oxford as commanding 
the line of the Thames, and of Gloucester as com- 
manding the lower Severn, gave Swein's earldom a 
military as well as a political importance. But while 
in Swein the house of Godwine pressed upon the 
west, a grant of the East-Anglian earldom to the 
second son, Harold, gave it the mastery of the east. 
In the very heart of England, Godwine set his ne- 
phew, Beorn, a brother of Swein Estrithson, as earl 

31 



^82 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. of the Middle-English about Leicester. The addi- 
The tion to Beorn's earldom of Nottingham and the old 

Godwine. l^^^^ of the Gyrwas and Lindiswaras made him mas- 

1035T053 ^^^ ^^ ^^■'^ Trent, as Swein of the Severn and the 
— Thames; and by 1045 ^^^ whole English coast from 
Humber round to Severn mouth had passed into the 
hands of the house of Godwine. 

"^^ofiiis" ^or was this all. Two years after the king's cor- 
power. onation, Eadgyth, Godwine's daughter, became Ead- 
ward's wife. We can hardly doubt the meaning of 
this step. In setting Eadgyth beside the king, God- 
wine aimed at meeting the secret hostility of the 
court and detaching Eadward from the Norman 
councillors, who, as he was conscious, were busy 
working against him. The influence of Robert of 
Jumieges, who had been appointed Bishop of London 
a year before, was as certain as his ill-will, and the 
memory of his brother's doom was stirred busily in 
Eadward's mind by the strangers round him. But 
so vast a stride towards the mastery of the realm as 
Godwine was making would of itself awake Ead- 
ward's suspicion, and hardly fail to rouse jealousy in 
other minds besides the king's. The house of God- 
wine had no hold on the north. In central England 
Leofric could hardly look with satisfaction on the 
advancing supremacy of his old rival. Godwine 
might still, indeed, have defied the efforts of the Nor- 
man courtiers, and the jealousies of his fellow-earls, 
had he retained the confidence of the nation at 
large. But the national trust which his good govern- 
ment had won was at this moment shaken by the 
deeds of one who stood next to him in his own house. 
The first blow at Godwine's power came from 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



483 



the lawless temper of his eldest son, Swein. In the chap.x. 
opening of 1046, a year after Eadgyth's marriage, The 
Swein carried off the Abbess of Leominster from her Godwine! 
nunnery, and sent her back great with child. Such^Qg^^^g 
an act was too darin^ an outraere on the religious 

o o Diffiaillies 

feeling of the country to pass unheeded. Ere Christ- of 
mas came the young earl fled, outlawed, it would ° ^""' 
seem, from his earldom to the court of Bruges ; in 
the summer of 1047 ^^^ again left Baldwin's land, 
perhaps to take part in the war in the Northern seas. 
Godwine was carefully watching the changes which 
went on in the North, for both the rival claimants 
to the dominions of Harthacnut, Magnus and Swein, 
alike laid claim to the English crown. But a year 
before, Magnus had threatened England with inva- 
sion, and a great fleet had been gathered at Sand- 
wich to meet his expected attack. It had been 
averted by successes of Swein Estrithson, which 
drew the host of Magnus to Denmark instead of the 
Channel ; but the Norwegian king was now again 
victorious, and his triumph promised a renewal of 
the danger to England. Swein had been driven 
from all but a fragment of the Danish realm; the 
union of Denmark and Norway seemed certain ; and 
the forces of the two realms in the hands of Maenus 
would in such a case have been thrown on English 
shores. 

It was no wonder, therefore, that Swein hastened opposition 
to his cousin's help ; or that Godwine proposed in poUcy. 
the Witan of 1047 ^o send a squadron of fifty ships 
to support his nephew's cause. But politic as the 
plan was, it met with a resistance which shows how 
greatly the earl's influence was shaken. The pro- 



^34 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. posal, it is said at Leofric's instigation, was rejected, 
The and Swein Estrithson was left to fight his battle 
Godwine. alone. The result was the coming of that peril 
1035^53 which Godwine foresaw. A new and overwhelming 
— defeat drove Swein from his last hold in Denmark, 
and brought about the submission of the whole Dan- 
ish kingdom to Magnus. Luckily for England, the 
conqueror's death at once followed his victory, and 
the two Northern lands again parted from one an- 
other. Harald Hardrada became king in Norway; 
Swein Estrithson was welcomed back by the Danes ; 
and the strife which shielded England from Scandi- 
navian attack broke out afresh on more equal terms. 
The decision of the Witan was far from proving any 
heedlessness of the safety of the realm ; had the at- 
tack come which Godwine feared, an English fleet 
was ready at this very time to meet it in the Chan- 
nel. Their will was simply against intervention in 
the North itself, against actual meddling in a distant 
quarrel, and no doubt against spending English 
blood in the support of a nephew of Godwine. 
Enough, it may have been thought, had been done 
for Godwine's house at home. England could hard- 
ly be called on to spend blood and treasure in win- 
ning a throne for his nephew abroad. But behind 
this natural hesitation of wiser men stirred the bit- 
ter enmity of the Norman group which Eadward 
had gathered round him. Even at this moment 
their opposition took a new vigor from the events 
which were passing over sea. 
William Ever since his kinsman left Normandy for the 



and 



Lanfranc. EngHsli shorcs, William had been slowly rising to 
his destined greatness. Troubles on the French 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 485 

frontier, occasional outbreaks of a baron here and chap. x. 
there, failed to shake the hold on the land which The 
tightened with every day of the young duke's grasp. Go°dwine. 
Round him the men who were to play their part in 1035I1053. 
our history were already grouping themselves. Will- — 
iam Fitz-Osbern was growing up as William's friend 
and adviser. The duke's half-brother, Odo, was al- 
ready Bishop of Bayeux. But chance had brought 
a wiser counsellor to William's side than Odo or 
Fitz-Osbern. In the early years of his rule, Lan- 
franc, a wandering scholar from Lombardy, had 
opened a school at Avranches. Lanfranc was the 
son of a citizen of Pavia, where he had won fame 
for skill in the Roman law. Whether driven out by 
some civil revolution, or drawn by love of teaching 
to the W'Cst, Lanfranc made his way to Normandy; 
and, troubled as was the time, the fame of his school 
at Avranches soon spread throughout the land. A 
religious conversion, however, interrupted his "work. 
Lanfranc quitted his scholars to seek the poorest 
and lowliest monastery he could find in Normandy, 
and came at last to a little valley edged in with 
woods of ash and elm, through which a " bee," or 
rivulet, ran down to the Risle, where Herlouin, a 
knight of Brionne, had found shelter from the world. 
Herlouin was busy building an oven with his own 
hands when the stranger greeted him with " God 
save you." " Are you a Lombard ? " asked the 
knight-abbot, struck with the foreign look of the man. 
" I am," he replied : and praying to be made a monk, 
Lanfranc fell down at the mouth of the oven and 
kissed Herlouin's feet. The religious impulse was 
a real one ; but in spite of the break from the world 



486 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP.X. and its learning which Lanfranc sought in this re- 
The tirement at Bee, he was destined to be known as a 

Godwine. great scholar and statesman rather than as a saint. 

1035T053. ^t was in vain that he dreamed of seeking a yet 
sterner refuge in some sohtude. The abbot's will 
chained him to the monastery, and Lanfranc's teach- 
ing raised Bee in a few years into the most famous- 
school in Christendom. The zeal which drew schol- 
ars and nobles alike to the little house of Herlouin 
was, in fact, the first wave of an intellectual move- 
ment which was now spreading from Italy to the 
ruder countries of the West. The whole mental 
activity of the time concentrated itself in the group 
of scholars who gradually gathered round Lanfranc ; 
the fabric of the canon law and of mediaeval scholas- 
ticism, with the philosophic scepticism which first 
awoke under its influence, all trace their origin to 
Bee. But Lanfranc was to be more than a great 
teacher. The eye of the young duke saw in the 
Lombard one who was fitted to second his own ar- 
dent genius; and in no long time the prior of Bee 
stood high among his counsellors. 

Revolt in William was soon to need wise counsel. Youns: 

Norman- , c> 

dy. as he was, the pressure of his heavy hand already 
warned the strongest that they must fight or obey. 
In the more settled land about the Seine order was 
now fairly established ; and in the coming contest 
it held firmly by the duke. But in the Bessin and 
Cotentin, where the old heathen and Norse tradi- 
tions had been strengthened by recent Danish set- 
tlements, the passion for independence was strong. 
The greatest lords of the Cotentin and the Bessin — 
Neal of St. Sauveur, Randolf of Bayeux, Hamon of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 487 

Thorigny, Grimbald of Plessis — waited but the signal chap. x. 
to rise. And in 1047 ^^^ signal was given. Hith- The 
erto his bastard birth had done William little hurt, eodwine. 
for of the descendants of Richard the Fearless orjog^Qgg 
Richard the Good who might have claimed his 
duchy, some were churchmen, some had perished in 
the troubles of his youth, one had been his guardian 
and protector ; while his cousin Guy, grandson of 
Richard the Good by his daughter's marriage with 
a Count of Burgundy, had been reared from child- 
hood with William and gifted with broad lands at 
Vernon and Brionne. But Guy saw in the temper 
of the west a chance of winning the duchy from 
the bastard, and its lords were quick at answering 
his call. 

So secret was the plot that William was hunting^ F<ii-es- 

D 111165* 

in the woods of the Cotentin when the revolt broke 
out, and only a hasty flight from Valognes to Falaise 
saved him from capture. As he dashed through 
the fords of Vire with Grimbald on his track the , 
Bessin and Cotentin were already on fire behind 
him ; and their barons gathered at Bayeux swore on 
the relics of the saints that they would smite Will- 
iam wherever they might find him. They were 
soon to find him on the battle-field. The men of 
the more settled duchy beyond the Dive, the men of 
Caux and Hiesmes, the burghers of Lisieux and 
Rouen, of Evreux and Falaise, stood firmly by the 
duke. But William had no mind to stand the 
shock alone. Hardly twenty as he was, his cool 
head already matched the hot ardor of his youth ; 
and he rode across the border to throw himself at 
the feet of the French king and beg for aid. The 



488 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. old alliance between the house of Hrolf and the 
The house of Hugh Capet, shaken as it had been of late, 

Go°dwine. was Still strong enough to secure the help he 

103^53. sought ; and King Henry himself headed a body of 
— troops which stood beside William's Normans on the 
field of Val-es-Dunes, to the southeastward of Caen. 
The fight that followed was little more than a fierce 
combat of horse surging backwards and forwards 
over the slopes of the upland on which it was fought, 
and ended in the rout of the rebel host. The mills 
of the Orne were choked with the bodies of men 
slain in its fords or drowned in its stream. 

Wii/iam's The victorv at Val-es-Dunes was the turnine- 

vtdory. .... ^ 

point in William's career. It was not merely that 
he had shown himself a born warrior, that horse and 
man had gone down before his lance, that he had 
faced and routed the bravest warriors of the Bessin ; 
nor was it only that with this victory the struggle of 
the wild Northman element in the duchy against civ- 
ilization, against the French tongue, against union 
with Western Christendom, was to cease. It was 
that William had mastered Normandy. " Nor- 
mans," said a Norman poet, " must be trodden dow^n 
and kept under foot, for he only that bridles them 
may use them at his need ;" and the young duke 
had bridled them to use them in a need which was 
soon to come. The valor which had so suddenly 
withstood him on the downs above Caen gave itself 
from that hour into its master's hands, and, mere 
youth of twenty as he was, William stood lord of 
Normandy as no duke had stood its lord before ; lord 
of a Normandy whose restless vigor was spending 
itself as yet in the winning of realms for adventurers 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



489 



over sea, but was ready to spend itself now in win- chap. x. 
ning realms for its duke nearer home. Far off as The 
the conquest was, it was at Val-es-Dunes that Will- JoXine^ 
iam fought his first fight for the crown of Cerdic. i^ggl^ggg 
It was the men who had sworn to smite him, on the — 
relics of Bayeux, who were to win for him England. 

It was France, however, rather than Eno^land, ^l'^^'^? 

o ^ and Anjoii. 

which directly felt the change in William's attitude, 
for in the year after Val-es-Dunes, William measured 
swords with the greatest of the then French powers. 
Girt in on every side by great feudatories, the 
crowned descendants of Hugh Capet had been 
saved from utter ruin by the firm support of the 
dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou. It was 
the Norman sword which had aided them to resist 
Burgundian disloyalty, and it was the sword of Nor- 
man and Angevin alike which saved them from the 
ambitious supremacy of the house of Blois. But it 
was just these two powers whose growth had now 
changed them from supports of the French crown 
into its most formidable dangers, and the policy of 
the French kings, unable to meet either single- 
handed, became more and more a policy of balance 
between them. At this time Anjou was the more 
pressing of the two foes. From a small province 
on either side the lower course of the Mayenne, 
with a few castles scattered over the lands of Blois 
and Touraine to the south and to the east of it, it 
had grown into the largest and most powerful state 
of central France. Southern Touraine had been 
gradually absorbed. Northern Touraine had been 
won bit by bit. A victory of the Angevin count, 
Geoffrey Martel, left Poitou at his mercy, and the 



490 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. seizure of Maine brought his dominion to the Nor- 
The man frontier. Geoffrey was soon at war with the 

Godwine. king, and it was to purchase WilHam's aid against 
1035T053 ^^^^ powerful vassal that King Henry had helped 
— the duke to put down the revolt of the Cotentili. 

War with xhe barsfain was faithfully carried out, and the 
victory of Val-es-Dunes was hardly won when the 
young duke and his Normans joined Henry in an 
attack on the Count of Anjou. A wooded hill- 
country formed the southern border of the Norman 
duchy, and from the hills of Vire and Mortagne the 
rivers Mayenne and Sarthe flow down to the heart 
of Geoffrey's country, to Le Mans and Angers. It 
was on this border that war broke out in 1048, cen- 
tring round Domfront and Alen9on, towns which 
command the head-waters of the two streams. But 
the duke's success was as rapid and decisive as be- 
fore. While Geoffrey marched to meet the French 
army, William surprised Alen9on, avenged the insult 
of its burghers, who had hung skins over its walls 
on his approach, with shouts of " Hides for the tan- 
ner," by ruthlessly hewing off hands and feet, and 
returned as rapidly to secure the surrender of Dom- 
front. The quick, sturdy blows put an end to the 
war; Geoffrey Martel made peace with king and 
duke, and the peace left the two fortresses he had 
won in the hands of William, to serve as a base for 
his future conquest of Maine. 

Norman \{ Val-cs-Duncs had left William master of Nor- 

England, mandy, the defeat of Count Geoffrey left him first 
among the powers of France. But it was not 
France only which was watching William's course. 
His new strength told at once on English politics. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^g^ 



The victory of his cousin over the rebels who would chap. x. 
have made him a puppet duke must have spurred me 
Eadward to struggle against the earl who had made Godwine! 
him a puppet king, and his little group of foreign ^^3"^^^ 
counsellors would watch the triumphs that followed — 
Val-es-Dunes as if every victory of William was a 
blow at Godwine and his house. We shall soon 
see that William himself was watching closely the 
struggle between Godwine and the king. What 
shape the young duke's dreams may have taken, 
whether he had already conceived the design, which 
was two years later disclosed, of following his cousin 
Eadward on the English throne, we cannot tell. 
But communications must have already passed be- 
tween the Norman group around Eadward and the 
court of Rouen ; and the nomination of an English 
prelate from among the circle of Norman courtiers 
showed the new confidence which Eadward was 
drawing from his cousin's victories. In the year 
of William's triumph over Geoffrey Martel, one of 
the king's Norman chaplains, Ulf, was raised to the 
see of Dorchester, a diocese which stretched from 
the Humber , to the Thames. As yet, however, 
there was nothing in William's attitude to mark 
hostility to the house of Godwine. But the next 
step in the young duke's policy was to set their 
attitude to each other in a clearer light. 

Already the course of events was drawing Eng- FUmders. 
land into relations with the western world at once 
closer and more extensive than any she had formed 
since the days of ^thelstan. The first breath of 
the later Conquest passes over us as English poli- 
tics interweave themselves with the politics not of 



1035-1053. 



492 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. Scandinavia only, but of Normandy and France, of 
The Flanders and Boulogne, of the Empire and the Pa- 

Godwin? pacy. It was to this wider field that the contest 
between Godwine and the Normans was to drift; 
and to follow the thread of English politics at this 
moment we have to turn to Flanders. Flanders 
was now one of the leading states of Western 
Christendom. The wild reach of forest and fen 
which Caesar had seen stretching along the Scheldt 
and the Lower Rhine, a region veiled in bitter mist 
and swept by the frost-winds of the Northern seas, 
had been subdued by the Roman sword, and won 
from the dying empire by men of kindred stock 
with the English conquerors of Britain. A portion 
of this wild land, the great triangle of territory be- 
tween the Scheldt, the Channel, and the Somme, 
which was known as Flanders, became a county in 
the storm of the Danish inroads. Its counts won 
their lordship by hard fighting against the North- 
men. But the quick rise of Flanders to wealth and 
greatness was due to the temper of the Flemings 
themselves. At the time we have reached their 
steady toil was already laying the foundation of that 
industrial greatness which the land preserved 
through the Middle Ages, and of that commercial 
activity which was to make it ere a hundred years 
had gone by the mart of the world. The industry 
of the Flemings found from the first a shelter in 
their counts. All the traditions of the country as- 
cribed to its rulers a love of justice which lifted 
them above the princes of their time. Story told 
how Lyderic, the founder of their race, beheaded his 
eldest son for taking a basket of apples from an old 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^g^, 

woman without payment. The very feuds of the chap.x. 
land were bounded by strict rule. Baron might The 
wage his petty war with baron ; but old usage and GoXLe. 
enacted law forbade the extension of the strife to^gg^ggg 
husbandman or trader. Hot as the quarrel might — 
be, too, fighting was its only outlet, for none might 
harry or imprison within the count's domain. 

It was in the peace and order which this strict ^-^■f ^'^'A^- 
rule secured that the Flemings toiled their way to 
wealth. The counts understood and identified 
themselves with their people's love of industry and 
freedom, and Arnulf the Old, our Alfred's grandson 
by the mother's side, became the ^'Elfred of Flemish 
history. The little boroughs of the land grew up, 
for the most part, beneath the shelter of its vast ab- 
beys; names such as those of St. Omer, St. Gher- 
lain, St. Amand, St. Vedast, show that municipal life 
was almost a creation of the Church. Even the 
lordly Ghent of after-days was but a borough which 
had clustered round the abbey of St. Bavon. But it 
was to Arnulf that tradition ascribed the institution 
of the great fairs which raised them into centres of 
commercial life, as well as the introduction of the 
weaving trade which made Flanders the earliest 
manufacturing country of Western Christendom. 
With equal sagacity the counts saw that the most 
precious gift they could confer on this rising indus- 
try was the gift of freedom. " Little charm," says 
Baldwin of Mons, "is there in a town for men to 
dwell therein save it be sheltered by the uttermost 
liberty." The freedom of settlement, the security 
of trade, the right of justice within their walls, the 
liberty of bequest and succession, which the Flem- 



.QA THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.x. ish boroughs were already acquiring, were soon to 
The ripen into an almost complete self-government. 

Godwin! The rapid prosperity of the country gave a corre- 
1055^53 sponding importance to its rulers; and this impor- 
— tance was heightened by the situation of Flanders as 
a border -land between France and the Empire. 
Feudatories of the emperor as of the king at Paris, 
though for different portions of their dominion, the 
counts soon learned to use their double allegiance 
to win a practical independence of either suzerain. 
The present ruler of Flanders, Baldwin of Lille, had 
reached a yet higher position than his predecessors. 
His wife was the sister of King Henry of France. 
He was among the most powerful vassals of the 
Empire. 

j?evivai xhe Empire had risen at this moment to a height 

Empire, uukuowu siucc the days of Charles the Great; a 
height from which it was from that hour slowly to 
fall. The wide dominion of Charles had been 
broken up by the quarrels of his house, the incur- 
sions of the Northmen, and the rise of a national 
temper in the peoples whom he had bound into a 
state. But the tradition of a single Christendom 
with one temporal as with one spiritual head lived 
on in the minds of men ; and in the German king 
Otto the Great the tradition again became a living 
fact. Conqueror of Italy, crowned at Rome as Em- 
peror of the world, the claims of Otto to the suprem- 
acy of Western Christendom found no acknowledg- 
ment in Spain, in what we now call France, nor in 
England ; in our own land, indeed, the assumption 
of imperial titles by Eadgar and ^Elthelred looks 
like a purposed answer to the imperial claims of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 495 

Otto and his successors. But even apart from its chakx. 
claims over realms which denied its sway, the Em- The 
pire stood from the hour of this revival high both Godwine. 
in strength and in extent above all other European ^^3^53 
powers. Lords of Germany and of the greater part — 
of Italy, of the subject realms of Bohemia, Moravia, 
and Poland to the east, of the equally subject realms 
of Lorraine and Burgundy to the west, wielding a 
more doubtful supremacy over Denmark and Hun- 
gary, the successors of Otto saw their rule owned 
from the Eider to the Liris, from Bruges to Vienna, 
from the Vistula to the Rhone. 

It was this mighty domain which passed in 1039, The 
three years before Eadward's accession to the Eng- movement. 
lish throne, into the hands of the second of the 
Franconian line, the Emperor Henry the Third. 
None of its rulers had shown a nobler temper or a 
greater capacity for action. In seven years Bohe- 
mia was quieted, Hungary conquered, and public 
peace established throughout Germany. But the 
projects of Henry were wider than those of a merely 
German king. He crossed the Alps to put himself 
at the head of a movement for the reform of the 
Church. A new religious enthusiasm was awak- 
ening throughout Europe, an enthusiasm which 
showed itself in the reform of monasticism, in a 
passion for pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and in 
the foundation of religious houses. We have seen 
how energetically this movement was working in 
Normandy ; it was the coldness, if not the antago- 
nism, that the house of Godwine showed to it which 
was the special weakness of their policy in England. 
Godwine himself founded no religious house ; he 



496 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. was charged by his enemies with plundering many. 
The His son Swein outraged the rehglous sentiment of 
Godwine. the day by his abduction of an abbess. But If It 
1035T053 ^^^ repulsed by the house of Godwine, the revival 
— found friends elsewhere. Leofric of Mercia was re- 
nowned for his piety and his bounty to religious 
houses. Eadward himself was saintly In his devo- 
tion. In England, however, as abroad, the first 
vigor of the revival spent Itself on the crying scan- 
dal of the day, the feudalizatlon of the Church by 
grants or purchase of Its highest offices as fiefs of 
lord or king, and by their transmission, like lay es- 
tates, from father to son. 
'^^^ It was asfalnst this abuse that Henry specially 

Empire '-' . . 

and the dlrcctcd hls actlou. In the theory of the Empire 
apacy. ^ gplrltual head was as needful for Christendom as 
a secular head ; emperor and pope were alike God's 
vicegerents In his government of the world. But 
the Papacy was now on the verge of a more com- 
plete feudalizatlon than the meaner prelacies of the 
Western Church. Three claimants now disputed 
the chair of St. Peter ; of these, two had been raised 
to It by the Roman barons, one by bribery of the 
Roman people. Their deposition, the elevation of 
a German pope, edicts against the purchase of ec- 
clesiastical offices, showed Henry's zeal In the puri- 
fication of the Church. It was shown still more 
grandly when the bishop whom he had called to the 
Papacy as Leo IX. renounced, at a v/arning from the 
deacon Hildebrand, the papal ornaments to which 
he had no title but the nomination of the emperor, 
and only- resumed them after a formal election by 
the clergy of Rome. Henry owned the justness of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^gy 

the principle, and Leo became his coadjutor in the chap.x. 
settlement of Christendom. From the reforms of The 
Henry the Third dates that revival of the Papacy Godwin? 
which was soon to deal a fatal blow at the Em-^Qg^gg 
pire itself. Hildebrand, the future Gregory the Sev- — 
enth, was in Leo's train as he returned over the 
Alps, and continued to mould the policy of the Pa- 
pacy in accordance with his own high conception of 
the commission of Christ's Church on earth. But 
for the moment the ecclesiastical reforms of the 
emperor were interrupted by the troubles of the 
Empire itself. Henry's greatness stirred the jeal- 
ousy of his feudatories ; and though his wonderful 
activity held the bulk of his realm in peace he was 
met in Lower Lorraine, the Low Countries of later 
history, by a rebellion under its duke. 

In this rising Duke Godfrey was backed by two ^^ommn- 
powerful neighbors, the Count of Holland and the pLTJers. 
Count of Flanders. It was probably in the spring 
of 1049, at the moment when Baldwin of Lille an- 
nounced by daring outrages his defiance of the em- 
peror, that a demand for his daughter's hand reached 
him from the court of Rouen. In itself the demand 
was natural enough. William had been pressed by 
his baronage to take a wife, and kinship alone 
might have drawn the duke to take her from the 
house of Flanders. It was no long time since Bald- 
win the Bearded, the present Count Baldwin's 
father, had married in his old age a daughter of 
Richard the Good, a cousin of William as of the 
English Eadward, and her presence at the court of 
Bruges would aid in the promotion of further alli- 
ances. But we can hardly doubt that political in- 

32 



498 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. terest had more weight with William than the 
The thought of kinship. A marriage with Matilda of 

Godwine. Flanders would strengthen his hold on France, 

iQg^Qgg whose growing jealousy formed one of his greatest 
— difficulties. Matilda's mother, Adela, was a sister 
of King Henry; and the connection between the 
courts of Paris and Bruges was of the closest kind. 
Even in a war with France the friendship of Flan- 
ders would cover the weakest side of the Norman 
frontier. But it is likely enough that England al- 
ready occupied as large a part in William's plans as 
France. We can hardly doubt from his visit but 
two years later that dreams of an English crown 
were already stirring within him. And in any proj- 
ects upon England it was of the highest import to 
secure the friendship of Flanders. 

England j^ ^^s the morc important that Baldwin's friend- 

and . 

Flanders, ship sccmcd already to have been won by the great 
English house in which William must even now 
have discerned the main obstacle to his success. In 
seeking the alliance of the Count of Flanders, God- 
wine was only following the traditional policy of the 
English kings. A common dread of the Northmen 
had long held the two countries in close political 
connection ; and the marriage of a former Count 
Baldwin with ^Ifthryth,' the daughter of Alfred, 
was part of a system of alliances by which Eadward 
the Elder and yEthelstan strove to bridle Normandy 
in its earlier days. Even when that dread of the 
Northmen died aw^ay, a friendly intercourse went 
on between the two countries. It was at Count 
Arnulfs court that Dunstan sought refuge in his 

^ See p. 175. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^gg 

exile ; and one of the archbishop's biographies is chap. x. 
due to a Flemish scholar. Commerce, too, linked The 
England with " Baldwin's land," as Flanders was Godwine. 
generally styled. Bruges formed the great i"nartjQ3^53 
for the countries of the Lower Rhine ; and the — 
merchants of Bruges were seen commonly enough 
in the streets of London. Flemings, indeed, were 
among the strangers whose encouragement was laid 
as a fault to Eadgar's charge. In the later days of 
y^thelred the political relations between the two 
countries became of a less friendly kind. It was 
from a Flemish harbor that Cnut steered to Eng- 
lish shores, and it was at Bruges that Emma and 
Harthacnut planned their invasion of England. 
But aid to Harthacnut and Emma was less offen- 
sive to Eadward than it would have been to Harald 
Harefoot, and even the reception of some Danish 
pirates in the Scheldt, with English booty on board, 
was hardly of weight enough to prevent the renewal 
of the old English friendship during the Confessor's 
reign. 

The friendship was at this time drawn closer by ^^'^ 
the relations between Baldwin and the real ruler of wiiuain. 
England. A formal alliance by which Godwine and 
the count were bound to each other was of old 
standing; and it had been sedulously strengthened 
on the earl's part by repeated gifts. The terms on 
which the two houses stood had, indeed, been shown 
only a year before by the reception which Swein 
found at Baldvv^in's court. To break the connection 
between the house of Godwine and the Flemish 
court, at any rate to neutralize its force, was of the 
first importance, therefore, for any success in after- 



^OO THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHARx. attempts upon England. The march of a Flemish 
The army on Rouen, the appearance of a Flemish squad- 
Godwine. Ton o£f the Seine, would alike be fatal to any passage 
1035T053. o^ ^^^ Channel by a Norman force. The friendship 
of Baldwin, on the other hand, would complete the 
schemes which William was already devising for se- 
curing the whole range of the coast from Brittany 
to the Scheldt. Count Ingelram of Ponthieu was 
the husband of the duke's sister. Eustace of Bou- 
logne was linked to him by his marriage with King 
Eadward's sister, Godgifu or Goda, who had been 
reared, like Eadward himself, at the Norman court. 
With the hand of Matilda, therefore, the whole coast 
of the Channel would be secured. The advantages 
of the match, indeed, were to be far greater than any 
which William could now have counted on; it was 
the friendship of Flanders which, in the end, alone 
made the Norman Conquest possible. But even 
now it was too marked a step to escape the watch- 
ful eye of such, a statesman as Godwine ; and we 
shall hardly do justice to his ability if we fail to 
trace his hand in the sudden and unlooked-for com- 
bination by which the Norman scheme was, for a 
while, rendered impossible. 
Council of While William was seeking: Matilda's hand at 
the court of Bruges, the new pope, Leo IX., and 
the emperor, Henry, had together taken in hand 
their work of reform. Only twice before had the 
western world seen, never again was it destined to 
see, Pope and Caesar united in the common rule of 
Christendom, united in the work of temporal peace 
and of religious reformation. The aim of the coun- 
cil which was summoned to meet them at Rheims 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^qi 

was to restore at once the tranquillity of the Empire chap, x. 
and the discipline of the Church. The first was, The 
indeed, in great part secured. Leo had already Godwine. 
launched his excommunication at the rebel pi'inces, ^Qg^oss. 
and though Baldwin of Flanders still remained de- — 
fiant, the Lotharingian duke Godfrey laid down his 
arms and submitted to penance for his sin. To 
bring spiritual peace to the Church needed longer 
toil. But England now seemed disposed to join in 
the task with pope and emperor. Bishop Duduc 
of Wells, with two abbots, appeared among the 
crowd of German and Burgundian bishops who 
answered Leo's summons to Rheims. The envoy 
was skilfully chosen. Duduc was himself a Ger- 
man, a Saxon or Lotharingian in blood, fitted, there- 
fore, by his extraction to deal with a German pope 
and a German emperor. His commission simply 
bade him bring back word to the king what was 
done for Christendom, but it is hard to watch the 
acts of the council without suspecting that behind 
this spiritual mission lay a political one. 

The work of moral reform went hand in hand ^-'•^/'"''^'^'''^ 
at Rheims with that of ecclesiastical reformation. 
Princes as well as bishops found themselves sum- 
moned to the bar of Christendom. But it is remark- 
able that in the front rank of these offenders we find 
the four rulers whom William's policy was drawing 
together along the Channel coast, and that in each 
case the crime laid to their charge was the same. 
Marriage contracted within the bounds of spiritual 
relationship was counted by the Church as incest; 
and so wide were these bounds, so numerous the 
modes in which this relationship could be contract- 



502 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. ed, that few offences were more difficult to evade. 
The Incest was the ground on which Eustace of Bou- 

Godwine. lognc and Ingelram of Ponthieu were alike excom- 

1035T053. municated ; but we are not told whether their Nor- 
man marriages were the ground of the condemna- 
tion. The projected marriage of Matilda was the 
crime which brought both William and Baldwin 
within the censure of the Church. Her mother, 
Adela, had been betrothed to William's uncle, the 
third Duke Richard of Normandy, before her mar- 
riage with Baldwin ; and such a betrothal created a 
spiritual affinity between the countess and the ducal 
house which may have served as the ground for the 
prohibition. But, whatever was the obstacle, the 
marriage was counted incestuous, and William and 
Baldwin were alike forbidden to proceed with it on 
pain of excommunication. 

Failure of How far thcsc acts of the council sprang from 

William's ^ ^ , . .... iti 

sc/iemes. Duduc s promptmg it is hard to say, but some light 
is thrown on the part which England was playing 
by the events which followed the close of the assem- 
bly. Its prohibition of the marriage was, in any 
case, a heavy blow to the Norman duke. But Will- 
iam showed no sign of submitting to the prohibi- 
tion. Strict Churchman as he was, we shall see 
him clinging stubbornly to this project for years to 
come, and marrying Matilda in the end in defiance 
of the excommunication. Nor did the Count of 
Flanders seem more likely to yield. In spite of 
Leo's thunders and the withdrawal of Duke God- 
frey, Baldwin remained in arms. The emperor was 
forced to march against him ; but Flanders required 
a fleet as well as an army for its reduction, and Henry 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^03 

called on England for naval aid. No request could chap. x. 
have jarred more roughly against the traditional The 
English relations with the Flemish counts, nor with Godwine. 
the previous policy of Godwine himself; but the aid 103^053 
which Henry needed was at once granted, and the — 
emperor no sooner marched on Baldwin's frontier 
than English ships gathered under the king himself 
at Sandwich for a cruise off the coast of Flanders. 
Attacked by two such powers at once even Bald- 
win's heart failed him ; and the count bowed with- 
out a struggle to the imperial demands. We can 
hardly doubt, from the part which Henry had taken 
in the council at Rheims, that among these was that 
of submission to the decree which prohibited Matil- 
da's marriage with William. It is, at any rate, cer- 
tain that so long as Henry lived Baldwin withheld 
his daughter's hand from the Norman duke. 

Whether this decisive aid of Eno^land had been Godwine's 

illllG.7tCC 

stipulated as the price of the council's intervention jmth 
between the duke and the Flemish count it is im- 
possible now to tell. But the result of both served 
Godwine's purpose too well to allow of a behef that 
he was strange to the real import of the policy he 
directed. At the close of 1049 the Flemish match 
seemed to be at an end. Baldwin, however, was no 
sooner severed from William, than Godwine hastened 
to renew the friendly relations which his policy had 
for the moment interrupted. His aim was precisely 
that of the Norman duke. Like William, the earl 
resolved to bind Flanders to his interests by a mar- 
riage tie. But where the duke failed Godwine suc- 
ceeded. How Baldwin was won, whether the match 
with Godwine's house was a condition of the with- 



Flanders. 



^04 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. drawal of the English fleet, we do not know, but the 
The reconciliation was a rapid one. In little more than 

Godwine. ^ Y^^^ after the close of the war with Baldwin, God- 

jQ3^Qg,, wine's third son, Tostig, was wedded to Judith, the 
— sister or daughter of the Count of Flanders. 

oijtiazury j^q triuHiph could liavc been more complete than 
■ this diplomatic triumph of Godwine on foreign 
ground. He was now at the height of his power; 
the King of England was his son-in-law, Swein, the 
King of Denmark, was his nephew, and the Count 
of Flanders was closely linked to his house. But in 
the very moment of his success new difhculties met 
him at home. While Eadward still lay at Sand- 
wich the exiled Swein returned to seek pardon and 
restoration to the lands he had lost. Harold and 
/ Beorn, to whom these lands had been granted, for a 
time withstood his demand ; but at a subsequent 
conference at Pevensey with Godwine and his 
cousin, Beorn was brought to consent, and he rode 
with Swein to serve as his mediator with the king. 
Again, however, the brutal nature of Godwine's eld- 
est son broke out in crime. Beorn was treacher- 
ously seized, carried on shipboard, and murdered. 
The outrage roused the wrath of all. Swein was 
formally branded as " nithing," as utterly worthless, 
and was forsaken by the bulk of his own followers. 
The men of Hastings chased the two ships which 
still clung to him, captured them, and slew their 
crews. But Swein escaped to Baldwin's land, where 
the war which Flanders was waging with England 
and the emperor at that moment secured him a 
refuse. He was soon to return. As the winter 
passed, and peace between Flanders and England 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 505 

was again restored, Bishop Ealdred of Worcester, chap.x. 
who had been raised to his see two years before in The 
the very height of Godvv^ine's power, appeared at the Godwine. 
court of Bruges. Ealdred was an adroit negotiator, 1035I1053 
and he may possibly have been commissioned to — 
bring about that new union of the count and earl 
which found its issue soon after in Tostig's mar- 
riage. He served, at any rate, another purpose of 
Godwine's. Early in 1050 he brought back Swein 
with him to England, and made his peace with the 
king. The murderer's outlawry was reversed, and 
he was restored to his old rule over the shires of the 
west. 

Such a restoration of such a criminal was an out- Godwme 
rage to the general sense of justice, which could primacy. 
hardly fail to weaken the cause of Godwine. But 
the earl's power remained unshaken ; and ere the 
year ended, the death of Archbishop Eadsige seemed 
about to raise it to a yet higher point. The vacancy 
of an English see, as of an English abbey, was at 
this time commonly filled by the direct nomination 
of the king in full Witenagemot ; it was the king 
who "gave" the bishopric by formal writ and seal, 
who placed the bishop's staff in his hand, who some- 
times personally enthroned him in his bishop's seat. 
But in some cases the royal nomination was pre- 
ceded by an election on the part of the clergy or 
monks, with a petition to the king for its confirma- 
tion. On the death of Eadsige the latter course 
was followed. The Canterbury monks chose ^Ifric, 
a kinsman of Godwine, for the vacant see ; and God- 
wine supported, with his whole power, their prayer 
for his acceptance by Eadward. The choice of 



5o6 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



eiiAR X. y^lfric was the last step in the steady process by 
The which the earl was concentrating all power in the 

Godwine. hands of his house. Already master of the State, 

1035I1053. the primacy of his kinsman made him master of the 
Church. The efforts of Eadward to provide a check 
on his influence by the elevation of Norman bishops 
broke idly against the overwhelming supremacy of 
an archbishop of Godwine's blood. Nor was this 
all. The constitutional position of the primate was 
even more important than his ecclesiastical position. 
He alone could lawfully set the crown on the head 
of an elected king. He alone had the right of re- 
ceiving from the people their assent to the king's 
rule, of receiving from the sovereign his oath to 
govern rightly. The choice of ^Ifric pointed 
plainly to Godwine's designs on the crown. 

Robert of j£ gycn a shadow of kin2:ship were to remain to 
him, Eadward was forced to resist. He can hardly 
have needed the whispers of his Norman courtiers 
to disclose the significance of y^lfric's election, or 
the influence of Robert of Jumieges to estrange him, 
as Godwine's friends murmured that Robert did es- 
trange him, from the earl. But once resolved on re- 
sistance, the king acted with the violence of a weak 
man driven to stand at bay. The choice which he 
made was yet more anti-national than Godwine's 
own. If the primacy with its spiritual and political 
powers was no post for Godwine's kinsman, it was 
still less a post for a Norman stranger. But it was 
Robert of Jumieges whom the king named as arch- 
bishop in the Lenten Witenagemot of 1051. The 
new primate soon showed that his elevation was but 
the first blow in a strife which was from this mo- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 507 

ment assured. Spearhafoc, a partisan of Godwine, chap. x. 
had been raised to the see of London as a means The 
of counterbalancing the appointment to the primacy. Go°dwine. 
Robert, however, hastened to Rome for his palHum, jQ3~Qg3 
and obtained from Pope Leo, probably on the usu- — 
al plea of simony, a condemnation of Spearhafoc's 
choice. On the ground of this prohibition he re- 
fused on his return to consecrate the bishop, although 
he " came to him with the king's writ and seal." 
Spearhafoc, unhallowed as he was, defiantly took pos- 
session of his bishopric. 

As August wore away the quarrel grew more bit- '^^^^ 
ter. Godwine complained of the primate's intrigues Boulogne. 
against him ; Robert complained of the earl's tres- 
pass on lands belonging to his see. A fresh cause 
of irritation was doubtless added by a visit of Eus- 
tace of Boulogne to the court at Gloucester. His 
coming was natural enough : he was wedded to the 
king's sister, and both he and his wife were endowed 
with wide estates in England. But it possibly had 
another end. The marriage of Tostig and Judith 
had just proclaimed to the world Godwine's triumph 
in Flanders ; and Eustace, a near neighbor of Count 
Baldwin, a friend and ally of the Norman duke, was 
affected above all by this new turn in Flemish poli- 
tics. But whether his visit was a result of this 
match or no, the sympathies of Count Eustace can 
hardly fail to have given fresh weight to the press- 
ure which Robert was bringing to bear on the king 
against Godwine. 

That the Count of Boulogne was looked upon Outbreak 
with hostility by Godwine's party we see from the 
precaution which Eustace took of arming his men 



5o8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^x. as he approached the earl's town of Dover on his re- 
The turn at the opening of September. His fears of a 

Godwine. Conflict were soon realized. One of his soldiers, 
1035^053. while roughly seeking lodgings, wounded a burgher 
who refused them ; the townsmen attacked the count ; 
and after the fall of some twenty men on either side 
Eustace was driven from Dover, and fled, almost 
alone, to Eadward. The king summoned Godwine 
in wrath from Tostig's marriage feast, and bade him, 
as Earl of Wessex, avenge the wrong done to his 
brother-in-law. With his usual skill, Godwine seized 
on the opportunity which the demand gave him. A 
contest was plainly at hand between Eadward and 
the earl ; but the fight at Dover enabled him at once 
to take ground not as an enemy of the king, but as 
an enemy of the foreigners who surrounded the 
king. He refused to attack his own people on a 
stranger's behalf ; and with his sons, Swein and 
Harold, summoned the men of their three earldoms 
to follow him in arms. Fighting, in fact, at once 
broke out between Swein's men and the men of 
Earl Ralf in Herefordshire. For the moment the 
bold stroke promised to be successful. Eadward 
lay defenceless in the midst of Swein's earldom. 
The followers of the three earls immediately gath- 
ered at their call, a few miles off Gloucester, in a 
force so " great and countless " as to show what care- 
ful preparation the house of Godwine had made be- 
forehand for the blow. From his camp on the Cots- 
wolds the earl demanded the surrender into his hands 
of Eustace and the Normans in Ralf's castle. But 
quick as had been Godwine's stroke, others were as 
quick as he. The earls of Mercia and Northumber- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^09 

land were doubtless on their way to the usual au- chap. x. 
tumnal meeting of the Witan ; but on the summons The 
of the panic-struck king they called up the whole GoTwine. 
strength of their earldoms, and hurried with the iQggl^Qss. 
smaller force about them to Gloucester. ' 

The approach of Leofric and Siward, with the men ^'"^"^■^ ^/ 
whom Ralf brought up from Herefordshire, changed plans. 
the whole face of affairs. The surrender of Count 
Eustace was at once refused, and as the Mercians 
and Northumbrians gathered round Eadward they 
clamored to be led against Godwine and his sons. 
Dexterous as the earl's policy had been, it had utter- 
ly broken down. His aim had been to stand before 
England as the foe of strangers and not of the king. 
But the sudden rescue wrought by Siward and Leo- 
fric forced him, " loath " as he was, to stand boldly 
out in arms against Eadward himself ; and it marks 
the power which the monarchy had now gained over 
the national sentiment, in great measure from God- 
wine's own policy and action, that the moment this 
attitude was fairly taken the earl's strength fell from 
him. But with the sentiment of loyalty was rising 
also the consciousness of national unity. The day 
had passed when Mercian or Northumbrian could 
shed West-Saxon blood as the blood of straneers. 
The wiser folk on both sides deemed it " unraed," or 
wisdom-lacking, to join battle, " seeing that there was 
most that noblest was in England in the two hosts." 

Not less striking than the force of either senti-^'^T^'i^^''"- 
ment was the new consciousness of national law. The 
great dispute was left to the judgment of the Wite- 
nagemot which was summoned on the twenty-first of 
September, so fast had events marched, at London, 



5IO 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



1035-1053. 



CHAP.X. The two hosts were parted by the river; Godwine 
The and his sons lay at Southwark ; Eadward and the 

Godwine. Mercian and Northumbrian earls encamped on the 
northern shore. The Witan no sooner met than 
they gave an earnest of their coming judgment by 
the outlawry of Swein. The reversal of Godwine's 
worst deed showed what had most shaken his power 
over Englishmen ; but Godwine still clung to his 
son. Outlaw as he now was, he kept Swein beside 
him. The earl trusted to the political skill which 
had rescued him from so many dangers, and Bishop 
Stigand of Winchester, one of his stoutest partisans, 
negotiated busily with the king. But while Stigand 
crossed and recrossed the river, Godwine's host 
melted away ; and a final summons to appear before 
the Witan drove him from Southwark. A sentence 
of outlawry on the part of the Witan and the host 
followed him in his flight over sea. 

Its results. The triumph of the king and of the primate was 
complete. Godwine with three of his sons — Swein, 
Tostig, and Gyrth — made their way to Baldwin's 
court. Two others, Harold and Leofwine, struck 
westward to Bristol and sailed thence to Dublin, 
where a native king, Dermot, was now lord alike of 
Irish and Danes. It is plain that the policy of the 
house of Godwine, closely linked as it was with the 
Northmen through Gytha and her kindred, had se- 
cured a hold on these western seas by an alliance 
with the Danish Ostmen, as it secured a hold on the 
eastern channel through its alliance with Baldwin. 
The orders given to Bishop Ealdred of Worcester, 
to seize Harold as he fled, mark the importance 
which the new government attached to this danger 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. rji 

in the West; but his pursuers "might not or would chap.x. 
not" overtake him. The cautious phrase of the The 
chronicler shows that, if Swein's inlawing and God- GoXLe. 
wine's daring stroke for supremacy in the realm had 1035I1053 
brought about a national resistance, there was no 
bitter hostility against his house. The earl's flight, 
indeed, seems to have been unexpected ; it is likely 
that many in the host at Westminster meant simply 
to back the king in his appeal against Godwine's 
last demands ; and the sudden disappearance of the 
great minister who had so long stood at the head 
of English affairs struck a panic into men's hearts. 
Murmurs passed from lip to lip that the land was 
lost now the land's father was gone. We see the 
power of this sentiment in the moderation of the 
acts which followed Eadward's triumph. Godwine's 
daughter — indeed, the king's wife — Eadgyth, was 
put away and sent to a monastery. The earldom of 
Swein was broken up, and while part of it fell to 
the king's nephew, Ralf, a part of it, along with the 
western portion of Wessex, was placed under the 
rule of another kinsman of Eadward's, Odda. The 
East-Anglian earldom of Harold was given to Leo- 
fric's son, .^Ifgar. Spearhafoc was driven from the 
see he claimed, and one of the king's Norman chap- 
lains, William, was raised to the bishopric of London. 
But we hear of no further reactionary measures ; nor 
is there any sign that, powerful as he now was, the 
Norman primate used his power to make England 
Norman. Neither Siward nor Leofric, indeed, were 
men to suffer their success to be turned to merely 
Norman uses ; and his conduct in this hour of inde- 
pendence shows that Eadward had till now favored 



CI2 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.x. the Norman group around him simply as a counter- 

The poise to the oppression of Godwine. 
Godwine! But in one breast the fall of the house of Godwine 
1035T053 "^^st have raised hopes which, bafifled as they were 

— to be again and again, were never thenceforth to 

William ,. ^ ^ . . 1 r 1 1) 1- • T-i 1 

visits die. In the trmmph 01 the earls policy m rlanders, 
".?■«« • William of Normandy had suffered the great defeat 
of his life. The marriage he had striven to bring 
about was denied him, while the marriage with 
Tostig bound Baldwin more firmly than ever to 
Godwine's house. But the fall of the earl opened 
chances of success in the aims which, we can hardly 
doubt, were now growing clearer before him. In 
the following Easter-tide, 105 1," came Earl William 
from beyond sea with great following of Frenchmen ; 
and the king welcomed him and so many of his fel- 
lows as seemed him good, and let him go again." 
There is something startling in the simple words 
which record the first landing of William on Eng- 
lish shores. Of the import of his coming we are 
told nothing by the English chronicler. But the 
Norman knights of the duke's train brought back 
tales to their own land of a fresh promise made to 
William by his royal kinsman that he would be- 
queath him his crown ; and, true it is, the tale deep- 
ened the conviction of every Norman that England 
was soon to be his own.' 

But Godwine was watching the turn of English 

^ Note the growth of the Norman convention from its beginning 
(i) with Eadward's accession and the rumored promise of succes- 
sion ; (2) its progress with Primate Robert's visit to Rouen and 
promise ; (3) and with William's visit to Eadward and promise. 
The very number of the promises throws grave doubt on the truth 
of any, but it shows the growing belief in the Norman pretensions. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^13 



feeling with other eyes than those of William. News chap.x. 
of the popular panic at his flight must soon have The 
reached him over sea ; nor can we doubt that the Godwine! 
great treasure which he carried to Flanders was lav-^Qg^Q^g 
ished to support the sympathy felt for him in his ex- — 
ile, and to spur Baldwin to the efforts which we find plans of 
the count making to induce Eadward to receive him 
again. But for months all was in vain. Winter 
and spring wore away, and still the king was stub- 
born in his refusal of pardon. At last Godwine 
girded himself to win his return by force. His first 
step was to free himself from the miserable son who 
had cost him so much. Brutal as Swein was, there 
is something pitiful in the tenacious affection with 
which Godwine had clung to him in spite of his 
crimes ; but the earl saw at last that whatever wel- 
come England might have for himself, it had no wel- 
come for Swein. And his departure on a pilgrim- 
age, in which he found his grave, removed the one 
great obstacle to Godwine's reconciliation with his 
country. Already friends were stealing over sea to 
Bruges, " happy to be exiles in his exile," ' while 
messages came from other friends who remained 
but called for his return, and pledged themselves to 
live and die with him.° Through the spring of 
1052, Godwine was busy equipping a fleet in the 
Yser, while Harold gathered ships at Dublin, and 

^ Vita Edw. (ed. Luard), p. 404. ' 

^ " And during the time that he was here in the land, he enticed 
to him all the men of Kent, and all the butsecarls from Hastings 
and everywhere there by the sea-coast, and all the east end, and Sus- 
sex, and Surrey, and much else in addition thereto. Then all de- 
clared that they would live and die with him." — Eng. Chron. (Peter- 
borough), a. 1052. 

33 



^14 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. when midsummer came all was ready. Eadward 
The was still resolute against the earl ; his own prayers 

Godwine. ^i"^d the embassies both of Baldwin and the French 

1035^53. ^i"8"' whose interposition again throws light on the 
wide reach of Godwine's political connections, alike 
failed to move him ; and a fleet and land force was 
gathered at Sandwich to meet his coming. 

Retum of -pj^g ^^^^\ \y^^ already started, but his first attempt 

Godwine. _ ^ •' ^ ^ 

ended in utter failure, for he was driven back to 
Bruges by a storm, and for a month all seemed at 
an end. But the failure had given a false security 
to Eadward. At the beginning of September the 
king's fleet withdrew to London to refit, and at the 
moment when the coast lay open, Eadward learned 
that Harold had left Dublin to join his father. The 
young earl turned into the Bristol Channel to make 
a descent on Porlock, and while the brutal ravages 
of his Danish shipmen woke the king's dread of an 
attack from the West, Harold's own ships rounded 
the Land's-End and entered the Channel. Godwine 
and his son met off the Isle of Wight, sailed east- 
ward along the coast, and entered the Thames. The 
country rose as they advanced. Vessels put off 
from every little port they touched, manned by sea- 
men who vowed to live and die with Godwine ; and 
when the earl's fleet moored before London it far 
outnumbered the fifty vessels of the king. Ead- 
ward, however, was hardly less active and resolute 
than his foes, and a large force lay marshalled along 
the northern bank of the Thames. But Godwine 
was too consummate a statesman to derive success 
from mere force of arms. ' He stilled the wild out- 
cry for battle which burst from his men, as the king 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



515 



delayed to give answer to the prayer of the earl for chap, x. 
restoration to land and goods. Bloodshed would The 
only part him irretrievably from the men with whom Godwine. 
he fought; it would part him yet more irretriev- 1035I1053 
ably from the king. He anticipated the constitu- 
tional distinctions of later times in representing his 
enterprise as simply directed against evil counsellors. 
He protested his loyalty to the sovereign who had 
humbled and outlawed him, and who had outraged 
his honor in driving his daughter from his bed. 
" He would rather die," he said, " than suffer aught 
to be done against his lord the king." 

He knew, indeed, that a combat was needless. ^'^ . 

•ypsto f'Cl tz OH 

London was on his side. Negotiations had been 
going on long before his coming with .its burghers ; 
and now that his fleet appeared before it the Lon- 
doners declared for the earl. The blow was decisive. 
Eadward's own soldiers swore that they would not 
fight with men of their own kin, that they would 
not have the land given over to " outlandish men," 
to perish through the strife of its own children. But 
Eadward's counsellors had not waited for this mutiny 
of the host. The Norman nobles at once rode off 
westward to Earl Ralf's country. The Norman 
primate, with the Norman bishop of Dorchester, 
mounted and rode through London to the sea, their 
train cutting their way with difficulty through a 
crowd of young burghers, who would have held or 
slain them. Deserted and alone in the great Wit- 
enagemot which met on the morrow, the king was 
forced to accept Godwine's purgation from the 
charges brought against him, and to restore him 
and his house to all they had lost. His sons re- 



^l6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. gained their earldoms; his daughter was brought 

The back to the king's house. " And there outlawed 

Godwine. ^^ey all Frenchmen that aforetime made unlaw, 

1035^53 deemed ill-doom, and red unrede in the land." 

^, . When the hosts which had gathered on either 

L/iauge in , '-' 

his side the Thames streamed back to their homes, the 
triumph of Godwine seemed complete. The king 
had been forced to give him the kiss of peace. His 
Norman rivals were in flight over sea. His . old 
possessions were restored. The influence which 
had rested before on his own supreme ability, on 
long experience and possession of authority, on the 
gradual accumulation of lands and honors, on the 
annexation of province after province by his house, 
rested now on the basis of a national acceptance, of 
a recall and a restoration which the solemn decision 
of the Witenagemot approved as national acts. But 
the earl's keen eye could hardly fail to see that the 
revolution of 105 1 had given a mighty shock to his 
power; even his restoration, triumphant as it was, 
failed to give back to his house its old supremacy. 
If Eadward had been beaten in his effort to ruin 
Godwine, he had shown what strength remained to 
the crown. If the two rival earls preferred God- 
wine to a Norman rule, they were far from purpos- 
ing to sink back into their old inferiority. The set- 
tlement which followed the earl's return throws 
light on the long negotiations which Bishop Sti- 
gand conducted with the Witan before the vote of 
Godwine's outlawry was recalled, and leaves little 
doubt that the fresh arrangement was one of mutual 
concession. 

The dignity of the crown was jealously preserved. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



517 



In the very hour of his triumph Godwine strove to chap. x. 
soften as far as he might Eadward's humiliation. The 
At the first sight of the king he flung down his arms Godwin°e! 
and threw himself at Eadward's feet praying for the 103^53 
king's peace. It was only when Eadward yielded ^T". 

1 . T 1 r 1 TT • Godwine 

to his prayer and the prayer of the Witan that the and 
earl took back his arms again from the king's hand 
and accompanied him into the palace. Even the 
change of the king's advisers remained a partial 
one. If Eadward was forced to abandon his Nor- 
man archbishop and the Norman advisers of God- 
wine's exile, a Norman court was still left to him. 
He remained surrounded by Norman stallers and 
chaplains, his writs were drawn by a Norman chan- 
cellor. Though the two kinsmen of the king had 
played a foremost part in the earl's overthrow, they 
were left uninjured. French as he was, Ralf re- 
tained his earldom of the Mages^tas. Odda, if he 
lost the earldom built up for him out of the western 
shires of Wessex, seems to have been compensated 
by the creation of an earldom of the Hwiccas out of 
the shires of Gloucester and Worcester. 

The same signs of compromise appeared in the Godwine 
new relations of Godwine with the rival earls. The Earis. 
house of Leofric had profited most by his fall. 
Whatever had been the steps of its growth, the 
Mercian earldom which had once been reduced to 
little more than three shires — Staffordshire, Cheshire, 
and Shropshire — now reached again eastward over -\ 

Lincoln and stretched westward to Oxford and the '"", a 
Thames ; and as if to build up again the old realm 
of Mid-Britain, Leofric's son ^Ifgar had received at 
Eadward's hand Harold's earldom of East Anglia. 



ri8 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP.x. Siward, master of Northumbria from the Tweed to 
The the Trent, for Nottinghamshire now passed into the 
GoXine! Northumbrian earldom, was rewarded for his share 
1035T053. ill Godwine's overthrow by a part of the counties 
— of Northampton and Huntingdon, a gift which 
served the poHtical purpose of providing a barrier 
between the possessions of Leofric and his son. 
Such a division of England raised Leofric and Si- 
ward to a new equality with Godwine ; but his sub- 
mission to it was probably a part of the terms of his 
recall. Wessex returned to Godwine as of old; 
East Anglia was also restored ; but Leofric and 
Siward retained the possessions they had won. 
Godwine \^ '^^ Settlement of Church matters there was 

and i/ie , . - ^ . 

c/un-ch. a like spirit of compromise. Spearhaioc, the claim- 
ant whom Godwine had backed in his occupation of 
the see of London, disappeared ; and the Norman 
bishop, William, returned, as soon as the storm was 
over, to his see. We hear nothing of ^E^lfric, the 
kinsman whom the earl had striven to raise to the 
primacy; but the question of the appointment to 
the see of Canterbury was too important a one for 
Godwine to yield. In the tumult which broke out 
when Eadward was forced to receive the earl back 
again, Archbishop Robert of Canterbury fled from 
London and crossed the Channel. His life, indeed, 
was in danger; his knights had been forced to cut 
their way out of London ; and a formal outlawry in 
the Witenagemot, on the ground that he and his 
Frenchmen had been foremost in making strife be- 
tween Godwine and the king, followed him over sea. 
But Godwine was far from resting content with 
Robert's flight. The elevation of the Norman to 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. cjo 

the primacy had been the crowning defeat of that chap. x. 
policy by which he was concentrating all power in The 
State or Church in the hands of his house. And coXLe. 
now that his power had returned, he fell back on his losglioss. 
older plan. There had been recent instances of the — 
deprivation of bishops by a sentence of the Witan : 
and though we have no record of such a step, we 
may gather that Robert was himself deprived of his 
see. It was given to Bishop Stigand of Winches- 
ter, whose action in the late contest marked him as 
an ardent partisan of the house of Godwine. Rob- 
ert at once hastened to Rome to appeal against the 
intrusion of Stigand into his see. It was plain that 
the strife between the rival primates must widen 
into a strife between England and the Papacy. No 
canonical power could be alleged for Robert's re- 
moval : and to churchmen generally the elevation of 
Stigand could seem nothing but a defiance of all 
ecclesiastical law. In Normandy sympathy for the 
exiled archbishop was naturally even keener. The 
memory of the slaughter of Normans by English- 
men at the seizure of Alfred was quickened by 
tales of the slaughter of Normans on Godwine's re- 
turn. The driving-out of the Norman prelates, the 
outlawry of the Norman courtiers, were taken as out- 
rages to the Norman name, and the elevation of Sti- 
gand remained as the most galling sign of God- 
wine's triumph. 

This triumph, however, was the last which God- ckayacur 
wine was to win. His long administration was fast Godwine. 
drawing to its close, and the sickness which was 
soon to end his life seems to have fallen on him im- 
mediately after his restoration. But alike in his 



1035-1053, 



^20 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. overthrow an.d his success he had shown the quaH- 
The ties which had so long placed him at the head of 

Godwine. the State. It is in the transitional moments of a 
nation's history that it needs the cool prudence, the 
sensitive selfishness, the quick perception of what is 
possible, which distinguished the adroit politician 
whom the death of Cnut had left supreme in Eng- 
land. Living in a time of transition, he was himself 
a fit representative of his time ; his birth disputed, 
his connections Danish, his policy English, a skilled 
warrior, but statesman rather than warrior, and ad- 
ministrator rather than conqueror. Beginning as a 
royal favorite, he died the " land-father " of the Eng- 
lish people ; from the court dependant he passed in- 
sensibly into the patient statesman; on the one side 
he appeared a grasping noble, on the other a wise 
ruler. The first great lay statesman of English his- 
tory, he owed his elevation neither to hereditary 
rank nor to ecclesiastical position, but to sheer 
ability ; the first minister who overawed the crown, 
his pliability, his good temper, his quick insight, 
his caution, and his patience showed that he pos- 
sessed the qualities of the adroit courtier. Shrewd, 
eloquent, an active administrator, Godwine united 
vigilance, industry, and caution with a singular dex- 
terity in the management of men. In the range 
of politics, indeed, he was unfettered by scruples. 
His deadness to the religious sentiment of his day 
was shown by the way in which he held aloof from 
the ecclesiastical and monastic revival of the time, 
and by his support of Stigand, unworthy as he was, 
from political motives. His indifference to the 
moral judgments of the men about him found ex- 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



521 



presslon in whatever share he may have had in the chap. x. 
murder of Alfred, and in his steady adherence to The 
the son whose crimes had openly outraged pubhc Godwine. 
feeling. His far-reaching ambition and keen sel- losglToss 
fishness were seen in the aggrandizement of his — 
house, and in the vast wealth at his command, as 
well as in his dexterous use of it. But in spite of 
this absence of moral sympathy, his fertility of con- 
ception, the range of his designs, the quietness of his 
strokes, his dogged perseverance, and his coolness 
and self-command in success, added to his long ad- 
ministrative experience, left him without a rival in 
the conduct of government. His policy both abroad 
and at home marked the daring and originality of 
his genius. In foreign affairs he was the first 
among English statesmen whose diplomacy and in- 
ternational policy had a European breadth, and con- 
cerned itself alike with Scandinavia, the Empire, 
the Papacy, France, Flanders, and the Irish Ostmen. 
At home his government was one of peace, for war- 
rior as he had been in his youth, he was absolutely 
without military ambition, and sought only political 
success. It was nevertheless in this field of home 
politics that the transitional character of his genius 
most truly asserted itself. Holding down feudalism, 
yet himself aiming at a great feudal revolution, 
building up in the council-chamber the power of the 
crown, yet himself turning the king into a puppet, 
he was the creator of a wholly new policy. He was 
the first to develop in the people at large a common 
interest in the English nation, an interest stronger 
even than the instinct of allegiance to the house of 
Cerdic ; and the new " loyalty " which was thus his 



^22 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. creation strengthened the authority of the crown, 

The even while it superseded the king. The true work 

Godwine. of Godwine lay in the building-up of the English 

1035^53 people, the awakening of a new loathing of foreign- 

— ers and of a new sense of kinship, and the gathering 

of the nation into that brotherhood which looked to 

him as the " land-father." 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. - ^23 



CHAP. X. 

The 
House of 
Godwine. 



Notes. 



1035-1053. 

{The following notes on the Growth of the Royal Adtninistration 

have been drawn up from some frag7nentary papers, very 

rough and imperfect, and wholly tmrevised.) 

In the history of the royal administration three stages are dis- 
tinctly marked, each of which indicates a fresh step in the progress 
of the kingly rule. In the time of Alfred, the great officers of the 
court were the four heads of the royal household — the hordere, the 
staller, the dish-thegn, and the cup-thegn. Under ^thelred the 
appointment of the high-reeve shows the first effort of the crown 
to create a minister of state. Finally, in the reign of Cnut we may 
trace the beginnings of that administrative body which was to be- 
come so important under the Confessor, the clerks of the chapel, 
or the "king's chaplains." 

The four officers of the early West-Saxon court are at least as old 
as -iElfred, and, whether borrowed or not in their actual form from 
the Frankish court, sprang naturally from the needs of the king's 
household for its inner regulation and finance, for its movements 
through the country, and for its commissariat. The hordere was 
the officer of the court in its stationary aspect, as the staller or bon- 
stable was of the court on progress ; while the hardly less important 
functions of the commissariat of this moving army were shared be- 
tween the steward and the butler. 

But of the four officers one only retained under the later West- 
Saxon monarchy any real power. The dish-thegn and cup-thegn 
lost importance as the court became stationary and no longer main- 
tained a vast body of royal followers. The staller retained only the 
functions of leading in war as the feudal constable, which in turn 
passed away with later changes in the military system. The hor- 
dere alone held a position of growing importance. 

The biir-thegn, camerarius cubicularius ; the hraegel-thegn, or 
keeper of the wardrobe ; the dispensator, thesaurarius, hordere, are 
all grouped by Kemble (Sax. in Eng. ii. 106) as names for the same 
great officer. The first instances given by him are ^Ifric thesau- 
rarius, under Alfred, ..^Ethelsige camerarius, under Eadgar, and Le- 
ofric hrsegal-thegn, under ^thelred. No doubt the " hoard " con- 
tained not only money and coin, but the costly ornaments and robes 
of the crown. Of ail the officers of the court he was far the most 
important, (i) as head of the whole royal service; (2) as exercising 



224 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. control over the royal palace or household, wherever it might be, 

and charged with care, " de honestate palatii seu specialiter orna- 

House of ^^^^'^ regali ; (3) as receiver of royal dues for the crown lands, and 

Godwine. head of the royal gerefan ("we may presume that he had the gen- 

— eral manaafement of the royal property, as well as the immediate 
~ ■ regulation of the household. In this capacity he may have been the 

Notes, recognized chief of the cyninges tungerefan, or king's bailiffs, on the 

— several estates ; for we find no traces of any districtual or missatic 
authority to whom these officers could account" — Ibid.); (4) as 
" dispensator " of the crown; and (5) through this, and in his 
charge " de donis annuls militum " as head of the household troops ; 
and (6) of the budding diplomatic service, through his care, " de 
donis diversarum legationum. — Hincmar 22, ap. Kemble, Sax. in Eng. 
ii. 106. If under the changing conditions of the West-Saxon mon- 
archy the importance of the hordere in some of these offices de- 
clined, if his control over the household became less important, 
and his headship of the royal troops passed into other hands, and 
his charge of the royal demesnes practically ended with the com- 
mutation into money-rents of the dues derived from them, he found 
his importance as treasurer growing at every change in the system 
of finance, and in the organization of the exchequer in its judicial 
as well as fiscal development. 

A second stage in the progress of kingly rule was marked by the 
creation, under ^thelred, of the high-reeve, the first effort of the 
crown to create a minister of state, a deputy of its executive and ju- 
dicial power beside the hereditary ealdormen, etc. Fiercely opposed, 
this institution became permanent under Cnut in the " vice-royalty " 
of Godwine ; under the Confessor in that of Harold ; and from it, 
under the Norman kings, sprang the justiciar. With the consoli- 
• dation of the royal administration there went on, no doubt, a corre- 

sponding development of the royal justice in the shape of appeals 
to the king himself from subordinate jurisdictions ; and the grow- 
ing pressure of this may have been the cause, if not of the institu- 
tion of the secundarius under Cnut, at any rate of the continuance 
of this great officer under a king like the Confessor, who needed no 
vicegerent through absence from his realm, as it was certainly the 
cause of the change of his name, under the Norman kings, to that 
of justiciar. It was thus the origin of the three great divisions of 
the " king's court," with their staff of officers, while its executive 
functions passed to the offspring of the third body of ministers, 
whose origin dates from the foreign kings of England, the clerks of 
the Royal Chapel, 

The Royal Chapel marks the third stage in ministerial organiza- 
tion. The high-reeve, indeed, early turned into a power which 
overawed the crown ; and the rapid extension of the sphere of the 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



525 



"capellani" may mark a side of the struggle for the independence chap. x. 

of the crown. The king's chaplains are first seen as a body under ~~ 

Cnut, but rapidly mount into power under the Confessor, when the Hcugg of 

" king's writ," issued through them, begins to be the efficient organ Godwine. 

of the royal will throughout the realm. From their head, the chan- ' 

■ • 1035-1053 

cellor, comes our equitable court of justice ; from the rest, our secre- ' 

taryships of state, with the whole fabric of modern administration. Notes. 
The system had its origin in lands whose circumstances differed 
from those of England. In Frankish and other Continental courts, 
where the customary Teutonic law had to be worked side by side 
with a Roman written law, the Roman clerk (apocrisiarius, referen- 
darius, cancellarius) was needed to decide whether orders were ac- 
cordant to law or not (Kemble, Skx. in Eng. ii. 114), or conflicted 
with the written jurisprudence, and to affix or withhold the royal 
signet accordingly. No such need, however, existed in England, 
and the presence of the royal chaplains, with their head, the chan- 
cellor, may be best accounted for by administrative reasons ; indeed, 
their institution coincides with the new class of royal writs which 
came in from the early years of Cnut's reign, issued by the king's 
personal authority without any confirmation by the Witan. In the 
first appearance of the chancery under Cnut, we see traces of a Lo- 
tharingian organization, in the persons of foreign chaplains, whose 
presence was probably due to their foreign training, and to the ex- 
perience they may have brought of the imperial chancery. Eadsige 
(Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 193, on his elevation to the archbishopric 
under Harald), the later Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stigand, the 
priest of Assandun (Ibid. p. 199; he was chaplain to Harald), who 
were among the chaplains, were indeed Englishmen. Wythmann, ' 
however, to whom Cnut, in his early days, gave the abbacy of Ram- 
sey, was "Teutonicus natione " (Hist. Rames., Gale, iii. 404). So 
Duduc ("De Lotharingia oriundus," Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 218; 
" natione Saxo," Hunter, Eccl. Doc. p. 15) was at the close of Cnut's 
reign, in 1033, Bishop of Wells, and in high favor with the king. 
The manors of Banwell and Congresbury were " possessiones quas 
haereditario jure a rege ante episcopatum promeruerat" (Hunter, 
Eccl. Doc. p. 15) ; and he seems in some way to have held the ab- 
bacy of Gloucester. He was probably, therefore, a " capellanus." 
Hermann, who was made Bishop of the Wilsaetas in the first years 
of the Confessor's reign, had probably been inherited by him from 
his Danish predecessors, and may have belonged to this early group 
of foreign chaplains. To the same group would belong Leofric, 
who (if Florence is right) must have been Reginbold's predecessor 
(" Regis cancellario Leofrico Brytonico mox Cridiatunensis et Cor- 
nubiensis datus est praesulatus," Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 199). Now, 
Leofric was "apud Lotharingos altus et doctus " (Will. Malm., 



2 26 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. Gest. Pontif. p. 201, Hamilton). Cnut's alliance with Conrad may 

~~ have had some influence in his choice of Lotharingian clerks. This 

House of ^ll'3,nce went on between Eadward and Henry ; the intrigues and 

Godwins, negotiations before the Council of Rheims may be connected with 

these Lotharingians entering the chapel. 
1035—1053 or 

^ ■ Under the Confessor the Royal Chapel underwent marked changes 

Notes, alike in its organization and in its character. From 1045 we find a 
— chancellor at the head of the clerks holding the royal seal which 
Eadward first brought into use in England ; while the uniform ten- 
or of the writs, and the replacing of the old English writing in the 
royal documents by the light French hand in use among foreign 
clerks, alike point to some new arrangement of the secretarial work 
and more exact organization of the chancery on foreign models. 
From this moment, also, we meet with almost exclusively foreign 
names, and these no longer names of Lotharingians, but of Nor- 
mans. The group of Lotharingians who had served under Cnut 
seems indeed to have been wholly broken up. Duduc had, even in 
Cnut's time, been rewarded by the see of Wells ; Hermann was, in 
1045, appointed by Eadward to the bishopric of the Wilsaetas; and 
in the same year Leofric was made Bishop of Devonshire and 
Cornwall. It is possible that the promotion of Hermann and 
Leofric was designed to clear the way for the French chancery that 
now took the place of the Lotharingian, the members of which 
must have been so closely connected with Godwine's policy since 
the days of Cnut ; and that this new organization of the Royal 
Chapel, following so soon on the appointment of Robert of Jumieges 
to the see of London (in 1044), marks an important step in Ead- 
ward's opening struggle with the earl. 

The earliest signatures given by Kemble (Sax. in Eng. ii. 115) 
date from 1045, i. e., from the opening of the strife between the 
king and Godwine — a significant date. They are those of Her- 
mann capellanus (Flor. Wore. a. 1045), Wulfwig cancellarius (Cod. 
Dip. 779), Reginboldus sigillarius (Cod. Dip. 810), Reginboldus 
cancellarius (Cod. Dip. 813, 824, 825, 891), with a staff of the same 
date: ^Ifgeat notarius (Cod. Dip. 825), Petrus capellanus (ib. 813, 
825), Baldwinus capellanus (ib. 813), Osbernus capellanus (ib. 825), 
Robertus capellanus (ib. 825). Then, in 1047, Florence gives Heca 
as chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Selsey ; and in 1049 Florence 
also notes Ulf as chaplain, who became Bishop of Dorchester in 
1051; Cynesige as chaplain, afterwards Archbishop of York; and 
William (1051), Bishop of London (for these Kemble gives no signa- 
tures). Two other names are from Florence : Godmann, chaplain 
in 1053, and Gisa in 1060. It may be that this organization of the 
chancery or chapel marks Eadward's first period ; his struggle 
with Godwine, and the foreign names of the staff, would suggest 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^37 

this idea. Godwine's triumph may have given a temporary blow chap. x. 
to this new administrative scheme, for Kemble notes two chaplains, — 
Cynesige and William, as signing in 105 1, but none after, save Gisa „ "^^^ - 
in 1060 (Kemble, Sax. in Eng. ii. 116). Godwine 

The charter in which Wulfwig figures as " regiae dignitatis cancel- 

larius" (Cod. Dip. 779) is noted by Mr. Freeman as " doubtful." 1035-1053. 
He afterwards succeeded Ulf as Bishop of Dorchester. The group, Notes, 
therefore, really begins with the Norman Reginbold. Reginbold — 
"appears in Domesday (i8o(5), by the description of ' Reinbaldus 
Canceler,' as holding lands in Herefordshire T.R.E." . , . After the 
Conquest "he still held lands in Berkshire (S^d, 60, 63), Gloucester- 
shire (166^), and Wiltshire (68^), if he is, as he doubtless is, the same 
as ' Reinbaldus de Cirencestre ' and ' Renbaldus presbyter.' He 
was Dean of Cirencester (Ellis, i. 398), and besides his lay fees he 
held several churches in Wiltshire (Dom. 65^)." — Freeman, Norm. 
Conq. ii. 357, 358. The permanence of the new organization is 
shown by his remaining with his fellows after the restoration of 
1052. Thus he signs the Waltham charter as "regis Cancellarius," 
with Peter and Baldwin as king's chaplains (Cod. Dip. 813). Of 
the notary ^Ifgeat I find no other notice. Peter and Baldwin, as 
we see, remained in the chancery with Reginbold to the end of the 
reign, when Baldwin became Abbot of S. Edmundsbury (Freeman, 
Norm. Conq. ii. 586. " He had been a monk of S. Denis, a cer- 
tain presumption, though not amounting to proof, of his French 
origin ")• Before his abbacy of S. Eadmund's he had been prior of 
Earl Odda's church at Deerhurst. (See charter in Monast. iv. 665. 
On Abbot Leofstan's illness, King Eadward " Baldwinum, S. Di- 
onysii monachum, ejus artis peritum, dirigendum curavit." — Will. 
Malm., Gest. Pontif., Hamilton, p. 156). Osbern's name indicates 
his Norman blood, but I know no more of him. Robert is of 
course the Abbot of Jum.ieges, and probably the real mover in 
the whole matter. Promotion, indeed, to sees did not necessarily 
vacate the ministerial post, for Robert begins to sign as Bishop of 
London in 1046 (Cod. Dip. 784), but this see would leave him free 
to assist in the chancery. Ulf, too, must have been added to it soon 
after 1045, for in 1049, when named to Dorchester, he is described as ' 

the king's "preoste" (Eng. Chron., Ab. 1049), and " regis capellanus" 
(Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 203). William, too, who is named " chap- 
lain of the king" (Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 207), on his promotion 
to London, in 1051, must have been introduced into the chancery 
after 1045, perhaps taking Robert's place on his rise to the primacy, 

Gisa alone among these later chaplains was a Lotharingian ; he 
was appointed Bishop of Wells in 1060. His solitary figure cannot 
have materially changed the French aspect of the chancery through- 
out Eadward's reign. The fact that Walter, the Lotharingian who 



528 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. X. at the same time became Bishop of Hereford, was Eadgyth's chap- 

— lain, may show that clerks were again being brought from this 
House of q^3.rter, or simply be a part of the Lotharingian traditions of God- 
Godwiue. wine's house, as shown by Adelhard and Harold. 

— [Dr. Stubbs has pointed out to me another foreign chaplain of 
xuoa-iuoo. Ea(j^a.rd's of whom we find mention elsewhere. '' Helinandus,.vir 

ITotes. admodum pauperis domus et obscure progenitus, literatura per- 

— tenuis et persona satis exilis, cum per notitiam Gualteri comitis 
Pontisarensis, de cujus comitatu gerebat originem, ad gratiam Ead- 
vardi Anglorum Regis pertigisset (uxor enim sua cum praedicto 
comite sibi necessitudinem nescio quam crearat), capellanus ejus 
fuit, et quia Francicam elegantiam norat, Anglicus ille ad Fran- 
corum Regem Henricum eum ssepius destinabat" (Guibertus de 
Novigento " De Vita sua," lib. iii. c. 2, Opera, ed. D'Achery, p. 496). 
King Henry made him Bishop of Laon (ibid.) in 1052; he died in 
1098 (Gallia Christiana, vol. ix. col. 524, 525). The second Bishop 
of Laon after Helinandus had also been in the service of a king of 
England, but this must have been Henry L (Guibertus " De Vita 
sua," lib. iii. c. 4, ed. D'Achery, p. 299). — A. S. G.] 



CHAPTER XL 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
1053-1071. 

In the revolution which restored Godwine ioDiffiaMes 
power nothing is more remarkable than the inac- wuuam. 
tion of William the Norman. To the duke, we can 
hardly doubt, the sudden success of Godwine was a 
bitter disappointment. The overthrow of his hopes 
was complete. Whatever promises Eadward may- 
have made to him, he could hardly look for their 
fulfilment save with the aid of the Normans at Ead- 
ward's court, and the Norman court-party had been 
broken up. The Norman archbishop was driven 
over sea, and the duke was not less likely than his 
people to resent the wrong done to the primate. 
The Norman knights who found a refuge with the 
Scot king soon fell beneath the axes of Siward's 
huscarls. How bitter a sense of disappointment 
lingered in Norman hearts we know from the fire 
w^hich the memory of these events kindled when, 
a few years later, William called Normandy to 
avenge them. Nor was the temper of the duke 
such as to brook easily disappointment. But wroth 
as he might be, it was impossible to attack England 
with Flanders at her back. The overthrow of Will- 
iam's schemes for a Flemish marriage by Godwine's 
dexterous negotiations with pope and emperor still 

34 



230 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XL tied the duke's hands. From the moment of the 
The council, whether Baldwin called on William to ful- 
cra^est fil his pledge in vain or no, the courts of Bruges 
1053T071 ^^^^ °^ Rouen steered apart again. Baldwin fell 
— back on his old alliance with the house of Godwine. 
The marriage of Judith with Tostig announced his 
change of policy, and promised to bind the earl and 
the count inseparably together. The fall of God- 
wine only brought out into clearer light the friend- 
ship of Flanders. It was in Flanders that the earl 
found refuge in his exile. It was from Bruges that 
his intrigues with his English supporters were car- 
ried on. His fleet was gathered in the Scheldt, and 
Flemish seamen were mingled with his own. Will- 
iam, with his own duchy still ill in hand and France 
watching jealously across his southern border, knew 
well that the estrangement of Baldwin barred any 
hope of attack over sea. Nor was this estrange- 
ment the least weighty of the dangers which threat- 
ened William at home, for the hostility of such a 
neighbor was sure to stir, into life the smouldering 
discontent of the Norman baronage. 
His We see the duke's consciousness of this danger 
from the step on which he ventured with a view of 
dispelling it. While Robert of Jumieges was still 
pleading at the papal court, William, by an act as 
daring as Godwine's, placed himself in opposition to 
the Papacy and the moral sense of Christendom. 
If he now claimed again the hand of Matilda, it was 
with a full foresight of the difficulties in which such 
a marriage was to plunge him. The prohibition of 
Pope Leo was the most formidable of the obstacles 
in his way. But in 1053 Pope Leo was a prisoner 



marriage. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 531 

in the hands of the Normans, who were founding a chap^xi. 
state in southern Italy; and WilHam seized the op- The 
portunity to wed Baldwin's daughter. But if Leo conquest 
was a prisoner, the Church was free, and the dukeiQ^^Q^i 
at once found himself face to face with the relio-ious — 
censure of the world about him. Rome laid the 
duchy under interdict. The archbishop of Rouen, 
his uncle Malger, threatened William with excom- 
munication. His own counsellor, the prior of Bee, 
openly opposed the marriage. Lanfranc was now 
the foremost scholar of Western Christendom, and 
his disapproval was weightier than even the thun- 
ders of the Papacy. It stung William to the quick. 
In a wild burst of wrath he bade his men burn a 
manor-house of Bee to the ground and drive out 
Lanfranc from Norman land. In his haste to see 
his orders carried out the duke overtook the Italian 
hobbling on a lame horse towards the frontier. He 
angrily bade him hasten, and Lanfranc replied by a 
cool promise to go faster out of his land if he would 
give him a better steed. " You are the first crimi- 
nal that ever asked gifts from his judge," retorted 
William ; but a burst of laughter told that his wrath 
had passed away, and duke and prior drew quietly 
together again. Wise or unwise, Lanfranc saw that 
it was too late to withstand the Flemish match ; and 
William knew well that no persuasion in Christen- 
dom could do so much to win over the Papacy to 
forgiveness as that of the Prior of Bee. Lanfranc 
made his way to Rome and sought for a dispensa- 
tion. But six years of tedious negotiation passed 
away and William remained unpardoned, while the 
censures of the Church woke into fresh life every 



^22 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI, element of hostility within and without his land. 
The The old cry of bastardy was heard once more. The 
Conquest old claims of rival branches of the ducal house woke 
losaToTi ^g^ii^ to life. Revolts of his kinsmen, William of 
— Eu and William of Arques, revealed the existence 
of a widespread plot among the Norman nobles ; 
and these were hardly trodden out before France it- 
self drew the sword. 
Victory of Kins^ Hcnrv was still bent on the policy of bal- 

Moytenier. o y j- -' 

■ance which held one feudatory at bay by help of 
another. A few years back, when Geoffrey Martel 
threatened his crown, he had relieved himself of the 
pressure of the Angevin by alliance with the Nor- 
man duke. He now resolved to break the power of 
Norm.andy by an alliance with the Angevin. After 
fruitless aid to the Norman rebels the king himself 
took the field. One French army marched from 
Beauvais on Normandy to the right of the Seine; 
another under Henry himself advanced from Man- 
tes on the duchy to the left of the river. The aid 
which came to the invader from Chartres and Aqui- 
taine, from the men of Rheims and Laon, as from 
the burghers of Tours and Blois, shows how widely 
the greatness of William had revived the old hatred 
of the Normans. But the number of his assailants 
only heightened William's triumph. To meet the 
double attack the Norman forces were parted in 
two divisions, William himself leading the southern 
army, which defended the country between the 
Seine and the Oise, while four of the barons headed 
a body which guarded the land between the Seine 
and the Bresle. It was the last which first en- 
countered the invaders. The French army under 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^33 

Henry's brother, Odo, and Count Guy of Ponthieu, chap^xi. 
which penetrated into the country about Aumale, The 
had taken up its quarters in the little town of Mor- conquest, 
temer, when it was surprised by the Norman onset. 1053I1071. 
The town was set on fire, the French were slain as — 
they hurried from its streets, and the whole army 
forced back in utter rout across the border. At 
night the news reached William as he lay with his 
host fronting Henry on the Seine. The cool craft 
and grim humor which underlay his dauntless cour- 
age showed itself in the use he made of the victory. 
Ralf of Toesny was sent to climb a tree in the 
neighborhood of the king's camp, and at dawn the 
Frenchmen heard him shouting the famous words 
which still live in the verse of Wace, " Up, French- 
men, up ; you sleep too long ; go bury your brothers 
that lie dead at Mortemer !" Panic spread with the 
news through the invading army, and before the 
sun was high its tents were in a blaze, and Henry 
was hurrying in retreat towards Paris. He pur- 
chased the release of the French barons who lay in 
William's prisons by a peace which was concluded 
in 1055, and which left William free to deal with 
Geoffrey of Anjou. The capture of Count Guy in 
the battle of Mortemer had enabled William to ex- 
act an acknowledgment of his lordship over Pon- 
thieu as the price of liberation ; and a march from 
Domfront now won a like ackjiowledgment from 
the lord of Mayenne. His submission carried Will- 
iam still further in the process of aggrandizement 
which was tearing the Maine country bit by bit 
from the grasp of Anjou. 

While William was thus fighting against odds in 



224 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. his own land he was In no case to hinder the tri- 
The umph of Godwine or Godwine's house in lands over 

Conquest, sca. Godwine, indeed, was fated to reap little from 

1053T071 ^^^ victory he had won. Soon after his return he 
-— began to sicken, and in April, 1053, he suddenly fell 

Harold, spccchlcss at thc king's board. With his death 
Harold became Earl of the West Saxons. The 
death of Godwine, indeed, strengthened the position 
of his house. It at once changed its whole relation 
to the king. Whatever stain of Alfred's blood lay 
on Godwine, none lay on his sons. Eadward had 
no galling sense that he owed them his crown, or 
that he had failed in a struggle to break their power. 
The earl's children had grown up in the king's court; 
they were his wife's kinsmen, and they seem to have 
shared the awe of the king's saintliness which was 
becoming general about them. From this time, 
therefore, Eadward's antipathy died gradually away. 
The wife w^hom he had discarded a year before won 
his affection. Tostig became his almost inseparable 
companion in chase or palace. Harold, if less cher- 
ished than his brother, was still regarded with favor. 
He took his father's place as the king's counsellor, 
but he was careful to hide the fact of his supremacy 
under demonstrations of loyal obedience to the king. 
"He always faithfully obeyed his rightful lord in 
word and deed," says the singer of Eadward's death- 
song, " nor left unheeded what was needful to his 
king." Over England, no doubt, the young earl's 
name exercised at first less command than his fa- 
ther's. But soon England saw with relief a ruler 
who brought with him no dark memories of the 
past, who had not stood by the invader's side at 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. C7C 

Assandun, whose first rise had not sprung from the chap. xi. 
favor of a foreign king, the sense of whose greatness The 
was not dashed by suspicions of an aetheHng's mur- conquest 
der or by tolerance of Swein's crimes. -.A^rT^-,, 

-^ . 1053-1071. 

Nor was Harold to prove himself wholly unworthy — 
of the singular fortune which gave king and people cAarac/er. 
alike peacefully into his hands. Born about 102 1, 
in the opening of Cnut's reign, he was now in the 
prime of life and vigor, a tall, comely man, robust of 
frame, courteous and conciliatory, in temper a typi- 
cal Englishman, indifferent to abuse, gifted with a 
cool self-command. Morally he rose in some points 
above his father's level ; he was gentler in mood, 
more tolerant of opposition, more prone to forgive ; 
he had far greater sympathy with English religion 
and English culture. He had inherited from God- 
wine an equal capacity for council and for war; he 
showed himself, in the years that followed, an active 
soldier and a skilful administrator. But in political 
ability he fell greatly below his father. Of the far- 
reaching statesmanship which had been Godwine's 
characteristic, of his capacity for wide combinations, 
of his foresight, his resource, the quickness with 
which he understood the need of change, and the 
moment for changing, Harold had little or none. 
But he was loyal to the policy of his house, and his 
patient, steady temper was as fitted as that of his 
father for gradually winning back the power which 
the revolution of 105 1 had shaken. As yet no 
dreams of any higher ambition seem to have visited 
the mind of Harold ; his first political act, indeed, 
was to co-operate with Eadward in providing for the 
succession to the crown. All hope that the king 



^^5 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. would beget children by Eadgyth had now passed 
The away ; and, whether they were true or false, whispers 

conquest, from over sea of a promise to William of Normandy 

1053^071 would spur the West-Saxon earl to a settlement of 
— the question. The king's nearest kinsman was liv- 
ing in a far-off land. Tw^o infant children of Ead- 
mund Ironside had found a refuge from Cnut, nearly 
forty years back, in Hungary ; and one of them, the 
king's nephew, Eadward, was still living there with 
his son, Eadgar, and his daughters, Margaret and 
Christina. Eadward resolved to call the aetheling 
home and own him for his heir; and, in 1054, Bishop 
Ealdred was sent on this errand to the imperial 
court. 

Harold's HunQrary, however, was now at war with the Em- 

policy in o J ^ ^ 

Mercia. pirc, and after waitmg a year at Cologne, Ealdred 
was forced to return and leave the plan to be carried 
out in more peaceful times. Conciliatory, however, 
as was his demeanor towards the king, Harold clung 
steadily to his father's policy of gathering England 
and its earldoms into the hands of his house. But 
we trace the caution and subtlety of his temper in 
the arrangements which followed on Godwine's re- 
turn and death. The great Northumbrian earldom 
remained to Siward ; the great West-Saxon earldom 
was taken by Harold himself. The policy of God- 
wine, as we have seen, had been to break up the 
Mercian earldom, till the province of Leofric was 
reduced to little more than Cheshire, Shropshire, 
and Staffordshire. But the death of Beorn, the 
exile of Swein, and the revolution of 105 1 had done 
much to build up again the central earldom. Mid- 
Britai^i and Lincolnshire seem now to have become 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 537 

attached to Leofric, and Mercia may have already chap, xi. 
stretched southward again as far as Oxford, while The 
Harold's old earldom of East Anglia had gone to conquest 
Leofric's son, i^lfgar. But the annexation of Not-jQg^Q^j 
tinghamshire to Northumbria deprived Mercia of — 
its hold on the Trent, and ran a block of strange 
territory into the heart of Leofric's earldom ; the 
grant of Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire to 
Siward barred all contact between the possessions 
of Leofric and his son ; while Mercia was cut off 
from the Severn and the Welsh by the retention of 
Ralf in his earldom of the Magescetas, or Hereford- 
shire, and the assignment, as seems likely, of the 
Hwiccas of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire to 
Odda, in compensation for his loss of western Wes- 
sex. By these adroit arrangements the assent not 
only of Siward and the king's kinsmen was secured 
to Harold's elevation, but even the Mercian house 
was won over, while its real power of action re- 
mained dexterously fettered. 

In the course of the following year, however, the Andin 
death of the Earl of Northumbria set Harold more bria. 
free to carry forward his father's plan of absorbing 
all England within the rule of his house. Never 
had Siward's name been so great as in his later 
years. His energetic action had done much to dis- 
place Godwine ; and if he consented to the earl's re- 
turn it was doubtless not without a price. At any 
rate, the year 1053 brought his continuous rule south- 
ward as far as the Trent in Nottinghamshire, and 
planted him in Mid-Britain as Earl of Northampton 
and Huntingdon, making his power such as might 
well balance that of the house of Godwine. An- 



538 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^xi. other part of the price may possibly have been the 
The assent of Godwine and Harold to a declaration of 
Conquest. War on the Scot kingdom, to which Siward was 
1053T071. urged alike by ambition and by family ties. Under 
the rule of Duncan the Scot kingdom had sunk low. 
The Orkney jarls had become masters of the West- 
ern Isles, of Caithness, and of the whole western 
coast to Galloway. The Mormser, or under-king, of 
Moray was practically independent in the north. 
The weakness of Duncan himself was fatally shown 
by the failure of the earlier attack which he had 
made on Northumbria, in spite of his close connec- 
tion by marriage with its earls. In 1040, a year be- 
fore the extension of Siward's power beyond the 
limits of Deira, Duncan made a fruitless raid as far 
as Durham; the burghers beat him back from the 
walls, and the Scots owed their safety to their horses, 
while Scottish heads hung round the battlements of 
the city. Immediately after this defeat, Duncan was 
slain by his subjects, and Macbeth, the Mormser of 
Moray, to whose charge the crime was laid, mounted 
the Scottish throne, while Duncan's two sons sought 
refuge with the Northumbrian earl. Though the 
rise of Macbeth seems to have marked a political 
revolution, the troubles of England, and it may be 
the jealousy of Godwine, had till now stood in the 
way of Siward's action. But as the boys grew to 
manhood the ties of kinship told on Siward,' while 
the political advantages to which such a kinship 

' Duncan must have been closely connected with the Northum- 
brian earls ; for he was the father of these two boys by a wife whom 
Fordun (iv. 44) calls " consanguinea Siwardi comitis." As this mar- 
riage was before 1040, the kinship must have come about through 
Siward's wife, Earl Ealdred's daughter. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. c^g 

might be turned may have Influenced Eadward and chap.xi. 
Harold. The 

A new cause for action had now made itself felt. cSnquel 
The flight of a body of Normans to the Scottish jQg^o^i 
court on Godwine's return from exile forced on the — 
struggle. The power of Macbeth had been doubled siward. 
by his close alliance with the Orkney jarls, and his 
reception of the Normans threatened danger to the 
English realm. It was " by the king's order " that 
Siward marched over the border to fiorht Macbeth. 
The danger was soon dispelled. In 1054 a North- 
umbrian fleet appeared off the Scottish coast, and 
a Northumbrian army met Macbeth and his Orkney 
allies in a desperate battle. The English victory 
was complete; the Normans were cut to pieces, and 
Macbeth fled to his Norse allies, to perish after four 
years of unceasing struggle with Duncan's son, Mal- 
colm, whom Siward placed on the Scottish throne. 
But the English loss was heavy. Many of the hus- 
carls, both of Siward and of the king, lay on the 
field. There, too, fell his son, Osbeorn, and his sis- 
ter's son, Siward. " Were his wounds in front or 
behind him .?" Siward was said to have asked at the 
news of Osbeorn's fall, and when assured that all 
were in front, to have said he wished no other end, 
either for Osbeorn or himself. But while Macbeth 
escaped, Siward was forced to fall back to prepare a 
fresh attack. His end, however, was near. Early 
in the next year, 1055, he died at York.' Legend 
told how, as sickness grew on him in the year after 
his victory, the earl called for his arms and stood 
harnessed to meet the call of death. " It was 

' Eng. Chron. a. 1055. 



^40 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XL shame," he said, "for warrior to die like a cow!'" 
The At Galmanho, in a suburb of York, he had reared 

Conquest. ^ minster to St. Olaf," and there he lay buried. The 

1053T071. church grew into the great abbey of St. Mary, but a 
— parish church beside it still preserves Olaf's name. 

Norihmn- '^^6 death of Siward, and the old age of Leofric, 
bria. who was now drawing to the grave, removed the 
check which their power had laid alike on Godwine 
and his son since the earl's return. The moment 
was come for undoing all that the revolution of 105 1 
had done ; and Harold took up again his father's 
policy of gathering England, province by province, 
into the hands of his house. Siward had left but a 
boy, Waltheof, too young to bridle the rough men 
of the north ; and passing over this child, Harold, 
in 1055, set his brother Tostig as earl over the 
Northumbrians. The step was a weighty one, not 
only in its relation to the house of Godwine, but as 
carrying forward the gradual consolidation of Eng- 
land itself. How steadily the royal authority had 
made its way during Eadward's reign was now 
shown by the accomplishment of what Eadgar and 
Dunstan had been unable to attempt, the bringing 
of Northumbria itself frankly into the general system 
of the realm. Till now Northumbria had held jeal- 
ously to a partial independence. Siward was a Dane, 
and he was wedded to a wife who sprang from the 
blood of the old Northumbrian rulers. Loyal as he 
was to Eadward, his temper was too fierce to brook 
interference from the south, nor did royal court or 
council concern themselves with Siward's earldom. 

' Hen. Huntingdon (Hamilton), pp. 195, 196. 
^ Eng. Chron. a. 1055. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



541 



Little of the justice and order which prevailed south chap. xi. 
of the Humber had as yet made their way to the The 
north of it. It was only by cruelty and violence that craquest. 
Siward held the country together. But, stern as^^g^^^ 
Siward's temper was, he was of kin to the men he — 
ruled. Tostig, dear as he was to Eadward, and 
matched though he might be with the daughter of 
the Flemish count, had nothing to link him with 
the north. He was neither Dane nor Northum- 
brian. He was a West Saxon who came solely in 
right of his choice by the West-Saxon king and the 
far-off Witan in the south, and with him came the 
English rule ; ' under the new earl, king's writs ran 
to the north of Humber as they ran to the south of 
it. Nor was Tostig's temper likely to win the love 
of the Northumbrians. Stern, grave, reserved, he 
carried a passionate love of justice into this chaos of 
feuds and outrages. He forced peace upon the land 
by taking of life and by maiming of limb.' Only 

^ The very character of the rising against Tostig, in later days, 
shows that the Northumbrians now considered themselves fully sub- 
jects of the English realm, and bound to appeal for justice to the 
English king ; while the failure of Harald Hardrada to attract their 
support, even against Harold, shows, at least, how much the old 
sense of northern isolation had been weakened. 

^ Tostig's order was bought by a merciless justice, " patriam pur- 
gando talium cruciatu vel nece, et nulli qiiantiunlibet fiobi'lz ^a.rctndo 
qui in hoc deprehensus esset crimine." — Vita Edw. (Luard), p. 422. 
There was nothing wonderful in Northumbria in his having Gamel, 
son of Orm, and Ulf, son of Dolfin, cut down in 1064. " Eboraci in 
camera sua sub pacis foedere per insidias." — Flor. Wore. (Thorpe), i. 
223. What marked it was the rank of the sufferers. Orm, Gamel's 
father, had married a daughter of Earl Ealdred and a sister of Si- 
ward's wife ; and though Gamel was not her son, he was thus of kin 
to the house of Siward. Englishmen and Danes alike joined in the 
bitter hostility awakened by Tostig's rule. In the leaders of the 
rising of 1065, we see, among other great nobles, Gamel-bearn, who 



242 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. over his northern border did he carry out the pol- 
The icy of his predecessor. Malcolm, still hard-pressed 

Norman . . 

Conquest, added to vast estates in Yorkshire a holding in Staffordshire ; Dun- 
1053-1071. Stan, the son of ^thelnoth, whose lands may have lain about Pom- 
■ — fret ; and Glonieorn, the son of Heardolf. With them, also, was 
young Waltheof, Siward's son, and his kinsman, Oswulf, Eadwulf of 
Bernicia's son, whom the revolution of 1065 was to set for a while 
in his father's Bernician earldom ; Copsige, too, who for a time had 
been Tostig's deputy in the north, and was under William to seek 
to become Bernician earl, and to fall by Oswulf s sword ; and Siward 
and Ealdred, descendants of Earl Uhtred by his third wife, ^Ifgifu. 
Also Meerleswegen, the shire-reeve, to whom Harold gave the north 
in hand after the battle of Stamford Bridge, the wealthiest of Eng- 
lish proprietors, with great domains in the southwest as far as Corn- 
wall ; Archill " potentissimus Northanhymbrorum " (Ord. Vit., Du- 
chesne, p. 511 C), whose vast estates stretched from Yorkshire to 
Warwick (Ellis, Domesday, ii. 41) ; and Gospatric, the later Earl of 
Northumbria, who through his mother, Ealdgyth, traced his descent 
to Earl Uhtred and his wife, iElfgifu, the daughter of King ^thel- 
red. 

The incidents of the yet later struggle with William the Conquer- 
or throw light on the wild life of the earlier Northumbria. Of the 
last hero of the north. Earl Waltheof, songs told how head after 
head of the Frenchmen was shorn off by his sword-stroke as they 
sallied forth from the gate of York ; told of his tall figure and mighty 
strength and sinewy arms and bull-like chest. — Will. Malm., Gest. 
Reg. (Hardy), i. 427. The Saga of the Scandinavians made him burn 
one hundred Frenchmen in a wood after the fight, and give their 
corpses to the wolves of Northumberland. — Saga of Harald Hardra- 
da (Laing), Sea Kings of Norway, iii. 95. Oswulf, when Copsige dis- 
possesses him, " in fame et egestate sylvis latitans et montibus, tan- 
dem collectis quos eadem necessitas compulerat sociis." — Sim. Durh., 
Gest. Reg. a. 1072. Churches gave no sanctuary : Copsige takes 
refuge in one, but " incendio ecclesise compellitur usque ad ostium 
procedere, ubi in ipso ostio manibus Osulfi detruncatur." — Ibid. 
Then a robber kills Oswulf : " cum in obvii sibi latronis lanceam 
prseceps irruerat, illico confossus interiit." — Ibid. So in the rising of 
1068, " seditiosi silvas, paludes, sestuaria et urbes aliquot in munimen- 
tis habent." — Ord. Vit. (Duchesne), 511 B. "Plures in tabernaculis 
morabantur ; in domibus, ne mollescerent, requiescere dedignaban- 
tur, unde quidam eorum a Normannis silvatici cognominabantur." 
— Ibid. C. When Robert of Comines takes refuge in the bishop's 
house at Durham, "domum cum inhabitantibus concremaverunt." 



Andia, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. c^^* 

by Macbeth and the Orkney men, was thrown on chap.xi. 
the friendship of North iimbria ; and Tostig, as his The 
"sworn brother," gave him substantial help in the conquest, 
maintenance of his throne. .ocTTn-r, 

The death of Siward, the elevation of Tostis^, — r 
could hardly fail to rouse to a new effort the one of East 
house which remained to vie with the house of God- 
wine. Girt in by Godwine's sons to north and to 
south, isolated in Mid-Britain, Leofric was too old 
and sickly to renew single-handed and without help 
from the king the struggle of 105 1. But his son, 
yElfgar of East Anglia, was now practically master 
of Mid-Britain, and in this emergency seems to have 
sought aid from his Welsh neighbors in the west. 
His alliance with Gruff ydd of north Wales marks 
the establishment of new political relations between 
England and the Welsh princes. No league of 
Englishmen with Welshmen with a view of influ- 
encing English politics had been seen since Penda's 
league with Cadwallon. The co-operation of the 
Welshmen with the Danes had been simply a co- 
operation of two foes against England itself. But 
from the time of ^Ifgar to the time of Earl Simon 
of Montfort, the Welsh play a part in English his- 
tory as allies of English combatants. The danger 
was the greater that Gruffydd had just become mas- 
ter, through the death of a rival, of the whole of our 
modern Wales; and we can hardly doubt that it 
was tidings of a negotiation between earl and prince 

— Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 1069. In the wild country beyond the 
Tyne, the clerks with Cuthbert's body, as they fled to Holy Isle, 
found a " praepositus Gillo-Michael," a "son of the devil," who robbed 
them of all he could, sacred as their burden was. Priests, whether 
a hundred or ten, were among the slain at Fulford. 



544 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. that drove Harold to a sudden stroke, in the banish- 

The ment of y^lfgar by the Witan in the spring of 1055. 

Conquest ^ If gar avenged his outlawry by drawing a Dan- 

1053T071 ^^^ force from Ireland and joining Gruffydd in a 

„ — ^ raid on Herefordshire. The rout of Earl Ralf's 

I ewer of 

Harold, forces Called Harold to the field ; but his cool sense 
preferred peace to a useless victory; and at the 
close of the year ^Ifgar was suffered to return, 
baffled, to his earldom and to look on at the further 
advancement of the house of Godwine. The terms 
of his restoration were seen on Leofric's death in 
1057. y^lfgar was allowed to take his father's earl- 
dom, but it was an earldom shorn of many of its 
older provinces. The earl was girt in on almost 
every side by the possessions of the rival house. 
Tostig and Harold lay, as before, to the north and 
the south of him. His own earldom of East Anglia 
was given to Harold's brother Gyrth. The whole 
line of the Thames was grasped by the two younger 
sons of Godwine. Gyrth, with his outlying earldom 
of Oxfordshire, held its upper waters. Leofwine 
possessed the shires about its lower course, Essex, 
Middlesex, Hertford, possibly Buckingham to the 
north of it, Kent and Surrey to the south. The 
earldoms of Northamptonshire and Nottingham- 
shire, held by Tostig as they had been held by Si- 
ward, pressed ^Ifgar still closer to the east ; while 
on his western border Harold himself, on the deaths 
of Odda and of Ralf, took possession of the earldom 
of the Magescctas and the course of the Severn as a 
check on the junction of ^Ifgar and the Welsh. 

Death fhe aim which Godwine had set before him was 

of the 

atheiing. all but rcachcd. Only a few shires in the heart of 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 545 

the country had escaped the grasp of his house, chap^xi. 
And at the moment of this great accession of power The 
fate flung in Harold's way the crown itself. The conquest, 
aetheling Eadward at last came from Hungary tOjogsI^yi 
receive the pledge of his cousin's throne, but he had ~~ 
hardly landed when he died at London. " Rueful 
was it and harmful to all this folk," sang an EngHsh 
singer, " that he so soon ended his life when he to 
England came, for mishap to this wretched people." 
How great a mishap his death was no singer could 
know. At first it seemed to transmit the succes- 
sion to his son Eadgar ; and young as the boy was, 
he might find in Harold a guardian stronger and 
mightier than the elder Eadgar had found in Dun- 
stan, or vE^thelred in yEthelwine. But the blow had 
wakened bolder and less noble thoughts in Harold's 
breast; and from the setheling's death, in 1057, we 
may date the upgrowth of that ambition which was 
to wreck England in its fall. 

Harold, throughout his career, had found himself The aim 
with few of Godwine's difficulties to face; neither the 
king's ill-will, nor the opposition of the court, nor 
the rivalry of the great earls, nor the violence of 
Swein. The jealousy of new and advancing great- 
ness which dogged the father's steps hampered the 
son's progress but little. The court was with him. 
The land grew accustomed to the power of his 
house. A few years broke the influence of every 
rival. The death of Siward, the old age of Leofric 
and the exile of his son, left Mercia and Northum- 
berland at his feet. Eadward's growing weakness 
threw power more and more into his hands, and as 
the king's end drew near the death of his destined 

35 



2^6 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. successor bequeathed, as It seemed, the crown to a 
The boy whose age left him naturally under the earl's 
craquest. guardianship. Had Harold been content with 
1053T071 power the death of Eadward would have left him as 
— completely master of England as before. But his 
air of cool reserve and self-command masked an am- 
bition of that meaner sort which craves not only 
power, but the show of power. Harold longed not 
to be the ruler of England only, but to be its king. 
During the last years of Eadward's life he was plan- 
ning a constitutional revolution of the gravest kind 
■ — the setting aside a great national tradition, in the 
transfer of the crown from the house of Cerdic to a 
house which had sprung only a few years before 
from utter obscurity. Daring and unscrupulous as 
such a project was, the power which Godwine had 
bequeathed to his son made it possible, had Harold 
held the threads of Godwine's policy with a hand 
like Godwine's. But the lower ability of the man 
was seen in the way in which advantage after ad- 
vantage was thrown away. At home the union of 
the house of Godwine itself was broken.' His for- 
eign relations snapped one by one. Flanders was 
lost. The Papacy was lost. Norway was left to 
prepare an attack unhindered by Swedish interven- 
tion. Across the Channel his advance was watched 
by one even more able and ambitious than himself.' 

^ In Tostig's visit to Nicolas in 106 1, and in the remonstrances of 
the queen alluded to at the king's death (" Frequentius declamasse 
. . , turn in frequentibus monitis ipsum regem et reginam" — Vit, 
Edw., Luard, p. 432), we may see traces of discord in the house of 
Godwine. 

"" I have formed the close of this chapter by taking some pages 
from the History of the English People, 'uiiiet seq.—{A, S. G.) 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



547 



William's hopes of the English crown are said to chap. xr. 
have been revived by a storm which threw Harold, The 
while cruising in the Channel, on the coast of Pon- conquest 
thieu. Its count sold him to the duke; and as the^Qg^Q^j 
price of return to England William forced him to „,tt 
swear on the relics of samts to support his claim to and 
its throne. But, true or no, the oath told little on ^'^^""'' 
Harold's course. As the childless king drew to his 
grave one obstacle after another was cleared from 
the earl's path. His brother Tostig had become his 
most dangerous rival ; but a revolt of the Northum- 
brians drove Tostig to Flanders, and the earl was 
able to win over the Mercian house of Leofric to his 
cause by owning Morkere, the brother of the Mer- 
cian earl, Eadwine, as his brother's successor. His 
aim was, in fact, attained without a struggle. In the 
opening of 1066 the nobles and bishops who gathered 
round the death-bed of the Confessor passed quietly 
from it to the election and coronation of Harold. 
But at Rouen the news was welcomed with a burst 
of furious passion, and the Duke of Normandy at 
once prepared to enforce his claim by arms. Will- 
iam did not claim the crown. He claimed simply 
the right, which he afterwards used when his sword 
had won it, of presenting himself for election by the 
nation, and he believed himself entitled so to pre- 
sent himself by the direct commendation of the 
Confessor. The actual election of Harold, which 
stood in his way, hurried as it was, he did not recog- 
nize as valid. But with this constitutional claim 
was inextricably mingled resentment at the private 
wrong which Harold had done him, and a resolve 
to exact vengeance on the man whom he regarded 



248 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^xi. as untrue to his oath. The difficulties in the way 
The of his enterprise were indeed enormous. He could 

Conquest, rcckon on no support within England itself. At 

1053I1071. home he had to extort the consent of his own re- 
luqtant baronage ; to gather a motley host from 
every quarter of France and to keep it together for 
months ; to create a fleet, to cut down the very trees, 
to build, to launch, to man the vessels ; and to find 
time amidst all this for the common business of croY- 
ernment, for negotiations with Denmark and the 
Empire, with France, Brittany, and Anjou, with 
Flanders and with Rome, which had been estranged 
from England by Archbishop Stigand s acceptance 
of his pallium from one who was not owned as a 
canonical pope. 

Stamford gyt his Hval's difficulties were hardly less than 

Bridge. . ... 

his own. Harold was threatened with invasion not 
only by William, but by his brother Tostig, who had 
taken refuge in Norway and secured the aid of its 
king, Harald Hardrada. The fleet and army he had 
gathered lay watching for months along the coast. 
His one standing force was his body of huscarls, 
but their numbers only enabled them to act as the 
nucleus of an army. On the other hand, the land- 
fyrd, or general levy of fighting-men, was a body 
easy to raise for any single encounter, but hard to 
keep together. To assemble such a force was to 
bring labor to a standstill. The men gathered under 
the king's standard were the farmers and ploughmen 
of their fields. The ships were the fishing-vessels 
of the coast. In September the task of holding 
them together became impossible ; but their disper- 
sion had hardly taken place when the two clouds, 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^40 

which had so long been gathering, burst at once chap. xi. 
upon the realm. A change of wind released the land- The 
locked armament of William ; but before changing, c^nqueS. 
the wind which prisoned the duke brought the host 105^071 
of Tostig and Harald Hardrada to the coast of — 
Yorkshire. The king hastened with his household 
troops to the north, and repulsed the Norwegians in 
a decisive overthrow at Stamford Bridge, but ere he 
could hurry back to London the Norman host had 
crossed the sea, and William, who had anchored on 
the 28th of September off Pevensey, was ravaging 
the coast to bring his rival to an engagement. His 
merciless ravages succeeded in drawing Harold from 
London to the south ; but the king wisely refused to 
attack with the troops he had hastily summoned to 
his banner. If he was forced to give battle he re- 
solved to give it on ground he had himself chosen, 
and advancing near enough to the coast to check 
William's ravages, he intrenched himself on a hill, 
known afterwards as that of Senlac, a low spur of 
the Sussex Downs near Hastings. His position 
covered London and drove W^illiam to concentrate 
his forces. With a host subsisting by pillage, to 
concentrate is to starve ; and no alternative was left 
to the duke but a decisive victory or ruin. 

On the fourteenth of October William led his men Bank of 
at dawn along the higher ground that leads from '""'•""'^" 
Hastings to the battle-field which Harold had chosen. 
From the mound of Telham the Normans saw the 
host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough 
trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac. 
Marshy ground covered their right ; on the left, the 
most exposed part of the position, the huscarls or 



250 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. bodyguard of Harold, men in full armor and wield- 
The ing huge axes, were grouped round the Golden 

conqueS. Dragon of Wessex and the standard of the king. 

1053^71 ^^^ rest of the ground was covered by thick masses 
— of half-armed rustics who had flocked at Harold's 
summons to the fight with the stranger. It was 
/against the centre of this formidable position that 
William arrayed his Norman knighthood, while the 
mercenary forces he had gathered in France and 
Brittany were ordered to attack its flanks. A general 
charge of the Norman foot opened the battle ; in 
front rode the minstrel, Taillefer, tossing his sword 
in the air and catching it again while he chanted the 
song of Roland. He was the first of the host who 
struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The 
charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind 
which the English warriors plied axe and javelin 
with fierce cries of " Out, out," and the repulse of the 
Norman footmen was followed by a repulse of the 
Norman horse. Again and again the duke rallied 
and led them to the fatal stockade. All the fury 
of fight that glowed in his Norseman's blood, all the 
headlong valor that spurred him over the slopes of 
Val-es-Dunes, mingled that day with the coolness 
of head, the dogged perseverance, the inexhaustible 
faculty of resource, which shone at Mortemer and 
Varaville. His Breton troops, entangled in the 
marshy ground on his left, broke in disorder, and as 
panic spread through the army a cry arose that the 
duke was slain. William tore off his helmet ; " I 
live," he shouted, " and by God's help I will conquer 
yet." Maddened by a fresh repulse, the duke spurred 
right at the standard ; unhorsed, his terrible mace 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^51 

struck down Gyrth, the king's brother ; again dis- chap. xr. 
mounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground The 
an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his conquest, 
steed. Amidst the roar and tumult of the battle ^Qg^^i 
he turned the flight he had arrested into the means — 
of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his des- 
perate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind 
it still held the Normans at bay, till William by a 
feint of flight drew a part of the English force from 
their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly 
pursuers, the duke cut them to pieces, broke through 
the abandoned line, and made himself master of the 
central ground. Meanwhile the French and Bre- 
tons made good their ascent on either flank. At 
three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged 
around the standard, where Harold's huscarls stood 
stubbornly at bay on a spot marked afterwards by 
the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the 
duke at last brought his archers to the front. Their 
"arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses crowd- 
ed around the king, and as the sun went down a 
shaft pierced Harold's right eye. He fell between 
the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a des- 
perate melee over his corpse. 

Night covered the flight of the English army : coronation 
but William was quick to reap the advantage of his wuiiam. 
victory. Securing Romney and Dover, he marched 
by Canterbury upon London. Faction and intrigue 
were doing his work for him as he advanced ; for 
Harold's brothers had fallen with the king on the 
field of Senlac, and there was none of the house of 
Godwine to contest the crown. Of the old royal 
fine there remained but a single boy, Eadgar the 



552 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAR XI. ^theling. He was chosen king; but the choice 
The gave Httle strength to the national cause. The 
Conquest, widow o£ the Confessor surrendered Winchester to 
lOssToTi. ^^^ duke. The bishops gathered at London incHned 
to submission. The citizens themselves faltered as 
William, passing by their walls, gave Southwark to 
the flames. The throne of the boy-king really rest- 
ed for support on the earls of Mercia and Northum- 
bria, Eadwine and Morkere; and William, crossing 
the Thames at Wallingford and marching into Hert- 
fordshire, threatened to cut them off from their earl- 
doms. The masterly movement forced the earls to 
hurry home, and London gave way at once. Ead- 
gar himself was at the head of the deputation who 
came to offer the crown to the Norman duke. " They 
bowed to him," says the English annalist, pathetically, 
"for need." They bowed to the Norman as they 
had bowed to the Dane, and William accepted the 
crown in the spirit of Cnut. London, indeed, was 
secured by the erection of a fortress which after- 
wards grew into the Tower, but William desired to 
reign not as a conqueror, but as a lawful king. At 
Christmas he received the crown, at Westminster, 
from the hands of Archbishop Ealdred amid shouts 
of " Yea, yea," from his new English subjects. Fines 
from the greater landowners atoned for a resistance 
which now counted as rebellion; but with this ex- 
ception every measure of the new sovereign showed 
his desire of ruling as a successor of Eadward or 
y^lfred. As yet, indeed, the greater part of Eng- 
land remained quietly aloof from him, and he can 
hardly be said to have been recognized as king by 
Northumberland or the greater part of Mercia. But 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 5^3 

to the east of a line which stretched from Norwich chap. xr. 
to Dorsetshire his rule was unquestioned, and over The 
this portion he ruled as an English king. His sol- conquest, 
diers were kept in strict order. No change was^gg^,! 
made in law or custom. The privileges of London 
were recognized by a royal writ which still remains, 
the most venerable of its muniments, among the 
city's archives. Peace and order were restored. 
William even attempted, though in vain, to learn 
the English tongue, that he might personally admin- 
ister justice to the suitors in his court. The king- 
dom seemed so tranquil that only a few months 
had passed after the battle of Senlac when, leaving 
England in charge of his brother, Odo, Bishop of 
Bayeux, and his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, the 
king returned, in 1097, ^^^ ^ while to Normandy. 
The peace he left was soon, indeed, disturbed. Bish- 
op Odo's tyranny forced the Kentishmen to seek 
aid from Count Eustace of Boulogne ; while the 
Welsh princes supported a similar rising against 
Norman oppression in the west. But, as yet, the 
bulk of the land held fairly to the new king. Dover 
was saved from Eustace ; and the discontented fled 
over sea, to seek refuge in lands as far off as Con- 
stantinople, where Englishmen from this time formed 
great part of the bodyguard or Varangians of the 
eastern emperors. William returned to take his 
place again as an English king. It was with an 
English force that he subdued a rising in the south- 
west with Exeter at its head, and it was at the head 
of an English army that he completed his work by 
marching to the north. His march brought Ead- 
wine and Morkere again to submission ; a fresh ris- 



524 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. ing ended in the occupation of York, and England 
The as far as the Tees lay quietly at William's feet. 

Conquest. It was, in fact, only the national revolt of 1068 that 

1053T071. transformed the king into a conqueror. The signal 
~ for the revolt came from Swein, King of Denmark, 

Norman who had for two ycars past been preparing to dis- 
^^"' pute England with the Norman, but on the appear- 
ance of his fleet in the Humber all northern, all 
' western and southwestern England, rose as one 
man. Eadgar the y^theling, with a band of exiles 
who had found refuge in Scotland, took the head of 
the Northumbrian revolt ; in the southwest the men 
of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset gathered to the 
sieges of Exeter and Montacute ; while a new Nor- 
man castle at Shrewsbury alone bridled a rising in 
the west. So ably had the revolt been planned that 
even William was taken by surprise. The out- 
break was heralded by a storm of York and the 
slaughter of three thousand Normans who formed 
its garrison. The news of its slaughter reached 
William as he was hunting in the forest of Dean ; 
and in a wild outburst of wrath he swore " by the 
splendor of God " to avenge himself on the north. 
But wrath went hand in hand with the coolest states- 
manship. The centre of resistance lay in the Dan-, 
ish fleet, and, pushing rapidly to the Humber with a 
handful of horsemen, William bought, at a heavy 
price, its inactivity and withdrawal. Then, turning 
westward with the troops that gathered round him, 
he swept the Welsh border and relieved Shrews- 
bury, while William Fitz-Osbern broke the rising 
around Exeter. His success set the king free to 
fulfil his oath of vengeance on the north. After 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^55 

a long delay before the flooded waters of the Aire, cHAP^xr. 
he entered York and ravaged the whole country as The 
far as the Tees. Town and village were harried conquest. 
and burned, their inhabitants were slain or driven ^Qg^^i 
over the Scottish border. The coast was especially 
wasted that no hold might remain for future land- 
ings of the Danes. Crops, cattle, the very imple- 
ments of husbandry, were so mercilessly destroyed 
that a famine which followed is said to have swept 
off more than a hundred thousand victims. Half a 
century later, indeed, the land still lay bare of cult- 
ure and deserted of men for sixty miles northward 
of York. The work of vengeance once over, Will- 
iam led his army back from the Tees to York, and 
thence to Chester and the west. Never had he 
shown the grandeur of his character so memorably 
as in this terrible march. The winter was hard, the 
roads choked with snow-drifts or broken by torrents, 
provisions failed; and his army, storm-beaten and 
forced to devour its horses for food, broke out into 
mutiny at the order to cross the bleak moorlands 
that part Yorkshire from the west. The merce- 
naries from Anjou and Brittany demanded their re- 
lease from service. William granted their prayer 
with scorn. On foot, at the head of the troops which 
still clung to him, he forced his way by paths inac- 
cessible to horses, often helping the men with his 
own hands to clear the road, and as the army de- 
scended upon Chester the resistance of the English 
died away. 

For two years William was able to busy himself ^t^ 

r 1 1 T 1 covipletion. 

in castle-building and m measures for holdmg down 
the conquered land. How effective these were was 



556 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

cHAP^xi. seen when the last act of the conquest was reached. 
The All hope of Danish aid was now gone, but English- 

Norman • o ' o 

Conquest, i^ien Still looked for help to Scotland, where Eadgar 
1053^071. ^^^ ^theling had again found refuge, and where his 
sister Margaret had become wife of King Malcolm. 
It was probably some assurance of Malcolm's aid 
which roused the Mercian earls, Eadwine and Mor- 
kere, to a fresh rising in 1071. But the revolt was 
at once foiled by the vigilance of the Conqueror. 
Eadwine fell in an obscure skirmish, while Morkere 
found shelter for a while in the fen country, where a 
desperate band of patriots gathered round an out- 
lawed leader, Hereward. .Nowhere had William 
found so stubborn a resistance : but a causeway two 
miles long was at last driven across the marshes, 
and the last hopes of English freedom died in the 
surrender of Ely. It was as the unquestioned mas- 
ter of England that William marched to the north, 
crossed the Lowlands and the Forth, and saw Mal- 
colm appear in his camp upon the Tay to swear 
fealty at his feet. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ccj 

CHAP. XI. 

The 
Norman 
Conquest. 

1053-1071. 

{^Unfinished Notes on Archbishop Stigaiid.) 



Notes. 



At the head of the English Church, in name at least, stood Stigand 
of Canterbury. We have seen the political importance of his eleva- 
tion and the disappointment of the hopes embodied in it ; but he 
represented in its highest form the principle of the house of God- 
wine, whose chaplain and negotiator he had been, and illustrates 
the conception of a High Churchman which that house entertained. 
His beginning had been strangely picturesque. On the site of his 
great victory at Assandun, Cnut reared, in 1020, a minster of stone, 
a rare sight in that country of timber and brick, and set Stigand 
there as its priest. Mr. Freeman and Mr. St. John assume this Sti- 
gand to be "no other than the famous archbishop. Stigand the 
Priest signs charters of Cnut in 1033 and 1035, and one without 
date, and one of Harthacnut in 1042 (Cod. Dip. iv. 46; vi. 185, 187 ; 
iv. 65). He seems to be the only person of the name who signs" 
(Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 424, note 4). He remained steadfast to the 
cause of the Danish house. He was chaplain to Harald Harefoot 
(Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 193) as he had been' to Cnut (Freeman, Norm. 
Conq. i. 425), and afterwards the nearest friend and adviser of Cnut's 
widow (Eng. Chron., Abingdon, 1043). Although it is said that in 
1038 he was nominated to a bishopric, yet he was deposed before 
consecration for lack of money to outbid his rivals for the office. 
(The story is only given by Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 193. He signs as 
bishop in Cod. Dip. 787. For date, see Freeman, Norm. Conq. ii. 64, 
note.) At the accession of Eadward, however, and possibly as a 
part of the price which the new king paid for his crown, he was 
named and consecrated to the bishopric of Elmham in the Easter 
Gemot of 1043. But, before the year was over, it would seem that 
some suspicion of political intrigues, carried on by him through the 
Lady Emma, had been awakened in men's minds. The seizure of 
the lands and treasures of Emma into the king's hands, by decree 
of the Gemot, was followed by the deposition of Stigand from his 
seat, and the confiscation of his goods by the counsel of the same 
Gemot, which, doubtless, held him guilty of a share in the crimes 
of Emma (Eng. Chron., Abingdon, 1043). " That Stigand should 
have supported the claims of Swegen is, in itself, not improbable. 
He had risen wholly through the favor of Cnut, his wife, and his 
sons " (Freeman, Norm. Conq. ii. 65). In the following year, how- 



1053-1071. 



558 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP, xr, ever, Stigand had made his peace with Godwine and Eadward, and 

~ was again Bishop of Elmham (Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 199) ; and 

Norman ^^ree years later, 1047, rose to the see of "Winchester. His services 

Conquest, in securing Godwine's reconciliation made him primate in 1052, and 

from this time till after the Conquest he stood at the head of the 

English Church. He was not, however, satisfied with the wealth of 

Notes. Canterbury; as he had promoted his brother, ^thelmaer, to Elm- 

ham when he went to Winchester, so on going to Canterbury he 

retained his rich see of Winchester — " praeterea multas abbatias " 

(Will. Malm., Gest. Pontif., Hamilton, p. 36). Of the " treasures of 

gold and silver" which he was said to have carried off, even to his 

prison (Angl. Sacr. i. 250), Winchester preserved a big silver cross, 

with two images, which were found in his treasury. 

But though Stigand might sit at Canterbury, none held him for 
archbishop. To the Abingdon chronicler in 1053, a year after his 
elevation, he was still " Stigand bishop," though he " held the bish- 
opric at Canterbury." In the same year bishops Leofwine of Lich- 
field and Wulfwig of Dorchester fared over sea for consecration 
rather than ask for it from him (Eng. Chron., Abingdon, 1053). 
Robert, deposed by the Witan, fled to tell his tale at Rome ; and Leo 
IX. was not likely to hold the deposition a valid one, nor, seemingly, 
did his successors, Victor II. and Stephen IX. For six years Sti- 
gand remained an archbishop without a pallium, driven, as the 
story of his enemies ran, to use the pallium of the Norman Robert, 
whose place he had usurped. At last, in 1058, Stigand found means 
to get his pallium from the anti-pope Benedict. Such a step, how- 
ever, really increased his difficulties. It enabled him, indeed, for the 
first and last time, to hallow bishops — -,:Ethelric of Selsey and Siward 
of Rochester ; but it soon made matters worse. Benedict was driv- 
en from the Papal see in 1059; and his successors, Nicolas II. and 
Alexander II., with the deacon Hildebrand behind them, were only 
forced into a position of hostility, which was made the more irrec- 
oncilable from the bitter strife in which the Papacy was then en- 
gaged with the emperor. Nor was the answer given by England to 
such a step on Stigand's part encouraging. So doubtful was his 
position still held to be, that in May, 1060, a year after Benedict was 
driven out, Harold himself had Waltham hallowed by Archbishop 
Cynesige. The general drift of feeling, too, was shown in the jour- 
ney of Walter, the Lotharingian bishop of Hereford, and Gisa of 
Wells, to Rome itself in April, 1061, for consecration from the very 
pope, Nicolas, who had been defied by Stigand's act; and by Ealdred, 
the Archbishop of York, also seeking his pallium at Rome, in the 
same year, accompanied by two sons of Godwine — Tostig and Gyrth. 
In fact, the very house of Godwine found itself unable to withstand 
the force of public feeling. The visit of Tostig and Gyrth to Pope 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



559 



Nicolas, in 1061, pointed to a reconciliation with Nicolas; and as to chap. xr. 

the feeling; of the kina;, Gisa himself tells us that it was Eadward 

The 
that sent him to Rome and to Nicolas. (" Romam direxit, et a Ni- jfQj.inan 

colao Papa ordinatum . . . honorifice recepit." — Hunter, Eccl. Doc. Conquest, 
p. 16.) — 

But a yet harder blow at Stigand's authority was to follow in the " 

next year, dealt by the hands of Wulfstan. It is possible that the Notes. 
Papal legates who were sent to England in 1062 by the successor of — 
Nicolas, Alexander 11., brought a distinct and fresh sentence against 
Stigand. (Cf. the terms of Wulfstan's profession. — Freeman, Norm. 
Conq. ii. note CC.) They were received by the Archbishop of York, 
who took them over England, and they were quartered at Worces- 
ter in charge of Prior Wulfstan (Flor. Wore, Thorpe, i. 220). 
Their reception in the realm and in the Gemot at Worcester, and 
their influence in raising Wulfstan to the see of Worcester (which 
quite goes with his language about Stigand), secured England for 
the Papacy and made the archbishop's position untenable. Wulf- 
stan's consecration, indeed, by Etildred, in September, 1062, was the 
most public and decisive repudiation of Stigand that had been made. 
The words of his profession (only printed in Freeman, Norm. Conq. 
ii. note CC) are, " Quo tempore ego Wulstanus ad Wigorniensem 
Wicciorum urbem sum ordinatus episcopus, sanctam Dorobernen- 
sem ecclesiam cui omnes antecessores meos constat fuisse subjectos, 
Stigandus jampridem invaserat, metropolitanum ejusdem sedis vi et 
dolo expulerat, usumque pallii quod ei abstulit contempta apostolicae 
sedis auctoritate temerare praesumpserat. L/nde a Romanis Ponti- 
ficibus Leo7te, Victore, Stephano, Nicolao, Alexandra, vocatus, excom- 
mimicattis, damttaius est. Ipse tamen ut coepit, in sui cordis obsti- 
natione permansit. Per idem tempus jussa eorum Pontificum in 
Anglicam terram delata sunt prohibentium ne quis ei episcopalem 
reverentiam exhiberet, aut ad eum ordinandus accederet. Quo tem- 
pore Anglorum praesules, alii Romam, nonnulli Franciam sacrandi 
petebant ; quidam vero ad vicinos coepiscopos accedebant. Ego 
autem Alredum Eboracensis ecclesiae antistitem adii ; professionem 
tamen de canonica obedientia usque ad praesentem diem facere di- 
stuli." The " perjuriis et homicidiis inquinatus," in Orderic's de- 
scription of Stigand's deposition (Ord. Vit., Duchesne, 516 B), may 
mean the bloodshed, etc., at the Gemot of 1052 ; but the " perjuriis " 
must go with the " dolo " of Wulfstan. None would have him. He 
did not consecrate Westminster. Harold, in later days, chose Eal- 
dred to hallow him as king. Stigand, indeed, stood with Harold 
beside the bed of the dying Eadward ; but it was only to hear him- 
self denounced as Eadward predicted the coming woe. " Cognosce- 
bant enim per sacri ordinis personas Christiani cultus religionem 
maxime violatam, hocque frequentius declamasse tum per legatos et 



56o THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. xr. epistolas suas Romanum Papam, turn in frequentibus monitis ipsum 

~ regem et reginam : sed divitiis et mundana gloria irrecuperabiliter 

Norman quidam diabolo allecti, vitae adeo neglexerant disciplinam ut non 

Con(iuest. horrerent jam tunc imminentem incidere in Dei iram " (Vita Edw., 

1053^71 ^"^^^' PP- 431- 432)- "Cunctisque stupentibus et terrore agente 

, ■ tacentibus, ipse archiepiscopus qui debuerat vel primus pavere, vel 

Notes, verbum consilii dare, infatuate corde submurmurat in aurem ducis, 
senio confectum et morbo, quid diceret nescire" (Ibid. p. 431). The 
"divitiis" above points to the ground which common rumor as- 
signed for Stigand's obstinacy. 

His presence with the earl at the king's bedside only shows that 
Harold was still driven to cling to him, though he, with all England, 
held him to possess no spiritual power. 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ^5i 



CHAP. xr. 



The 
Norman 



Notes. 



(/ have reprinted, from an article written by Mr. Green in the 

Saturday Review for August 22, 1868, the following Conquest. 

passages which deal with the character of Harold, 1053-1071, 

and, in the scarcity of materials, furnish some 

commentary on the text. — A. S. G.) 

"The death of Godwine in the very hour of his triumph be- 
queathed the direction of EngHsh affairs to his son, Earl Harold. 
It is the special merit of Mr. Freeman's elaborate researches into 
the later history of Eadward's reign that they bring home to us the 
fact that the man, who in common narratives starts into rule for a 
single year by his seizure of the Crown, had in reality been the 
ruler of England for twelve years before. The coronation of Har- 
old was, as he fairly puts it, the natural climax of the life of one 
who at twenty-four years old " was invested with the rule of one of 
the great divisions of England ; who seven years later became the 
virtual ruler of the kingdom ; who at last, twenty-one years from 
his first elevation, received, alone among English kings, the crown 
of England as the free gift of her people." The obvious lesson of 
all this is that Harold can no longer be judged from the single 
stand-point of Senlac. The year of his great close is simply the 
last of an administration which extended over thirteen years; and 
it is the general tenor of that administration, rather than of any 
isolated events in it, that must really give us the measure of Harold. 
He came to power, it must be remembered, unfettered by many of 
the obstacles that had beset his father. The revolution which had 
restored his house had freed him from the internal rivalry of a 
foreign party at the court. The defeat of Macbeth and the eleva- 
tion of a nominee of England to the Scottish throne removed all 
danger from the north. If any fears of a Danish reaction still lin- 
gered, they must have been removed by the death of Osgod Clapa. 
Siward and Leofric, the two formidable counterpoises to the power 
of his house, passed away in the first years of his rule. Godwine 
had carried with him to his grave a thousand party resentments, 
gathered along a tortuous course of political intrigue. The one 
great moral obstacle that stood between England and his family 
had died with Swein. None of the jealousy which Eadward dis- 
played towards the supremacy of his first minister seems to have 
displayed itself towards his second. For twelve years he was the 
undisputed governor of the realm. And this political supremacy 
was backed by high personal qualities. . . . The character of the 
earl, however, remains singularly obscure. The very nature of his 
administration itself, during the greater part of it, is dark and mys- 

36 



^62 THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 

CHAP. XI. terious. The three last years of it, indeed, are memorable enough 

~ — the years of the Welsh campaign, the expulsion of Tostig, the 

N'orman accession to the Crown ; but the ten that precede them defy even 

Conquest, the industry of Mr. Freeman. . . . With the exception of his doubt- 

— ful vovasfe through France, it is notable that throughout the rule 
10'i3-1071 / o o ' o 

of Harold England is without any foreign relations whatever; for 

Notes, the embassy to the Imperial Court in 1054 had a simply domestic 

— purpose, and the nomination of a few Lotharingian bishops does 
not affect the really insular nature of his policy. Nor is this ab- 
sence of outer relations compensated by any internal activity. Mr. 
Freeman marks, indeed, the predominance of ecclesiastical admin- 
istration as the characteristic of this earlier period of Harold's rule ; 
but when we look closer into the mass of details, there is simply no 
ecclesiastical administration whatever, no conspicuous synod, no 
great Church reform — nothing, in a word, but the appointment of a 
few prelates in the place of others, the attempted introduction of 
the rule of Chrodegang, and, so far as Harold himself is concerned, 
the foundation of a single religious house. ... In his civil adminis- 
tration, as in his foreign and ecclesiastical, it is difficult to grasp 
any new or large conception in the mind of Harold, such as those 
which lift his Norman rival into greatness. Take him at his best, 
there is little more than a sort of moral conservatism, without a 
trace of genius or originality, or even any attempt at high states- 
manship. Take him at his worst, and we can hardly fail to see a 
certain cunning and subtlety of temper that often coexists with 
mediocrity of intellectual gifts. In the internal government of the 
realm he simply follows out his father's policy, while avoiding his 
father's excesses. For one great political scandal he is solely re- 
sponsible. It may not have been with a deliberate purpose of neu- 
tralizing the great constitutional check on an English king that he 
allowed the highest dignity of the English Church to remain 
throughout his rule in a state of suspension. But if we acquit him 
of a purpose which would be a crime, it can only be on the plea of 
an indifference to the true relations of the State which was even 
worse than a crime. In all other respects his civil administration 
during his first ten years of rule is the mere continuation of his 
father's. There is the same scheme of family aggrandizement, 
carried out in even a less scrupulous way. To gain the paternal 
earldom of Wessex, indeed, Harold had been compelled to resign 
his own lordship of East Anglia to the rival power of Mercia. But 
two years after, when he was firm in his saddle and the death of 
Siward had added the north to the domain of his family, Harold 
dealt a sharp blow at the one house that held him in check. . . . 
There are but four accounts left of the banishment of Earl ^Ifgar 
in 1055, and of these three agree in declaring the earl guiltless or 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. 



563 



nearly guiltless. The fourth, which avers that he publicly confessed chap. xi. 
his guilt, but that the confession escaped him unawares, is ' that of — 
the chronicler who is most distinctly a partisan of Harold's.' ... jj^^® 
Harold was forced, indeed, to consent to his victim's restoration ; Conquest. 

but when Leofric's death threw his father's earldom into his hands, 

he wrested back East Anglia and girded Mercia round with the 1053-1071. 
chain of the possessions of his house. It is impossible, in the Notes, 
absence of facts, to explain the change of policy that followed. It — 
may have been that the house of Leofric, confined now to a few 
central counties of the realm, was no longer dangerous as a foe, and 
might be useful as a friend. It may have been that Harold was 
jealous of the power of Tostig and of his influence with the king. 
All that we know is that Harold suddenly reversed his whole pre- 
vious policy, and in spite or in consequence of his brother's feud 
with the sons of .^Ifgar, intermarried with their house. The mar- 
riage was quickly followed by the rising of Northumbria against 
its earl, and the rising was clearly prompted by Mercian instigation. 
But was the instigation simply Mercian } Harold was now the fast 
friend of Eadwine and Morkere ; the expulsion of Tostig removed 
the only possible rival to his hopes of the Crown ; the division of 
Northumbria into two earldoms, so evidently stipulated as the 
price of Morkere's accession, told only to Harold's profit. It is cer- 
tain that when the two brothers stood face to face the charge was 
openly made that the revolt had been owing to the machinations 
of Harold. It is certain that the charge was so vehemently urged, 
and received so much credence, that Harold thought it needful to 
purge himself legally by oath. Anyhow, in spite of the violent 
opposition of the king, the royal minister yielded every point to 
the insurgents, and his brother fled over sea. It is, we repeat, im- 
possible, from sheer dearth of information, to disentangle the threads 
of this complicated web of intrigue and revolution, or to pronounce 
with any certainty on the character of Harold's course in the mat- 
ter. If Harold was simply using England as a vast chess-board, 
and moving friends and foes in an unscrupulous play for power, he 
was amply punished. The revenge of Tostig proved the ruin of 
Harold. The victory of Stamford Bridge was the prelude of the 
defeat of Senlac. . . . Even hero-worship can hardly err in its praises 
of that final struggle, and the critic who rates Harold lowest may 
own that there are supreme moments when even the commonplace 
gather grandeur ere they pass away. But the character of the man 
and of his rule is to be gathered, not from the hour of heroic strug- 
gle, but from the years that preceded it. A policy of mere national 
stagnation within and without sprang from the natural temper, the 
poverty of purpose, the narrowness of conception, of a mind which 
it is impossible to call great," 



INDEX. 



Abbo of Fleury writes the life of St. 
Eadmund, 326. 

Abingdon, ^thelwold made abbot of, 
283 and note 2 ; school at, 283 ; 
Northumbrians visit Eadred at, 286, 
note ; Eadvvig's benefactions to, 299, 
note 2 ; clerks from Glastonbury 
accompany .^thehvold to, 329, 7tote 
2 ; dealings of its abbots with the 
burghers of Oxford, 42 1 ; Chronicle 
of, 355, Jtote I. 

Aclea, battle of, 71, 76, 77. 

Adela, sister of King Henry of France, 
marries Baldwin, Count of Flanders, 
494, 498 ; betrothed to Richard III. 
of Normandy, 502. 

Adelard of Ghent, his life of St. Dun- 
stan, 269, note. 

Administration, royal, 523 ; its devel- 
opment under ^thelred, 411-414 ; 
under Cnut, 475, note ; under Ead- 
ward, 475. 

^fic made High Reeve, 378 and note 
4 ; slain by Leofsige, 379 and note i. 

.iElfgar, Ealdorman of Essex, father-in- 
law of King Eadmund, 250. 

^Ifgar, son of Leofric, made earl of 
East Anglia, 511, 517; makes alli- 
ance with Grufifydd of North Wales, 
544 ; outlawed, 544 ; restored, 544 ; 
succeeds Leofric in Mercia, 544. 

^Ifgar, son of ^Ifric, blinded, 363. 

^Ifgifu, daughter of ^Ethelgifu, mar- 
ries Eadvvig, 298 ; parted from him 
by sentence of Archbishop Odo, 
299 ; seized and carried out of the 
realm, 301, 302, rtote I. 

^Ifgifu, daughter of ^thelred II., 
marries Earl Uhtred of Northum- 
bria, 383, note. 

^Ifheah, St., bishop of Winchester, 
carries on the policy of yElfric, 362, 
note ; negotiates a truce with Swein 
and Olaf, 364 ; negotiates a treaty 



between Olaf and .(Ethelred, 365 ; 
translated to Canterbury, 385, note 
3 ; his injunctions for the observ- 
ance of religious duties, 385 ; seized 
by Thurkill as hostage for the Dane- 
geld, 392 ; his martyrdom, 392 ; his 
body translated to Canterbury, 415. 

^If heah, kinsman of Eadvvig, 294 ; 
made Ealdorman of Central Wes- 
sex, 303. 

^If helm, Ealdorman of the Northum- 
brian Provinces, 357, 7iole: made 
earl of Deira, 358 ; slain, 382 and 
note I ; Florence's legendary ac- 
count of his murder, 382, note. 

^Ifhere, kinsman of Eadwig, becomes 
one of his chief counsellors, 294 and 
note 2 ; made Ealdorman of Mercia, 
297 ; his rise traced in the charters, 
297, note 3 ; revolts against Eadwig, 
299 ; his influence with Eadgar, 
303 ; his independence of the crown, 
334 and note i ; his title of " Here- 
toga," 334 ; heads the anti-monastic 
party, 337; supports the claim of 
Eadward to the crown, 338 ; trans- 
lates the body of Eadward from 
Wareham to Shaftesbury, 342 ; his 
death, 342. 

^Iflasd, daughter of ^Elfgar, Ealdor- 
man of Essex, marries his successor, 
Byrhtnoth, 250. 

.Alfred, King of Wessex, his birth at 
Wantage, 94 ; his visit to Rome in 
early childhood, 94; authorities for 
his life, 94, note 3 ; visits Rome and 
Gaul with his father, 95 ; his early 
love of letters, 95 ; becomes next 
heir to the crown by the accession 
of .(Ethelred, 96 ; becomes Secunda- 
rius, 82, note i, 96 ; his marriage, 96 ; 
his sickness, 96 ; marches with ^Eth- 
elred against the Danes at Notting- 
ham, 97 ; leads the van at Ash- 
down, 98 ; succeeds i^ithelred as 
king, 99 ; first King of Wessex who 



566 



INDEX. 



was also King of the Mercians, 46 ; 
defeated by the Danes at Wilton, 
100 ; buys their withdrawal from 
Wessex, 100 ; sends alms to Rome 
and India, 100 and note 2 ; doubt- 
ful story of his besieging the Danes 
at London, 100, note 2 ; marches 
upon Guthrum's camp near Ware- 
ham, 104; makes a treaty with the 
Danes, 104 ; besieges them in Exe- 
ter, 104 ; falls back upon Somerset, 
105 ; encamps at Athelney, 105 ; 
musters the West - Saxon host at 
Ecgberht's stone, 106 ; defeats the 
Danes at Edington, 106 ; treaty of 
Wedmore, 107 ; his work of resto- 
ration, 125, 126 ; founds abbeys at 
Winchester, Shaftesbury, and Athel- 
ney, 127; his military reforms, 127- 
129 ; his extension of the thegn- 
service, 129, 130; his reorganization 
of the fyrd, 130, 131 ; creates a na- 
tional fleet, 131, 132 and note a^; his 
conception of public justice, 132, 
133, note 2 ; his difficulties in en- 
forcing justice, 134, 135 ; becomes 
King of Mercia, 137 ; sets up a mint 
at Oxford, 138, 421 ; at Gloucester, 
422; his laws, 25, 139 and note i, 
324; drives the Danes from the 
siege of Rochester, 142 ; his strug- 
gle with Guthrum, 143 ; his (second) 
peace with Guthrum, 120 ; its true 
date, 144; its terms, 144, 145 and 
note I ; becomes master of London, 
144 and note I ; restores and peo- 
ples it, 144 and note 1 ; renews its 
walls, 188,441 ; rise of national sen- 
timent under, 147 ; his intellectual 
work, 149-151 ; his chaplains, 150; 
education of his children, 150 and 
note 4, 181, 182 and note i ; of his 
nobles, 150, 7iote 4, 153 ; his zeal for 
learning, 150 and notes 3 and 4, 151 ; 
sends for scholars from over sea, 
151 ; learns Latin, 151 and tzote i ; 
story of Asser's visit to, 151-153 ; 
his work in the creation of English 
prose, 153, 154 ; his translations, 
155, 156, 161 ; work in the English 
Chronicle, 159 and trote 3, 160; its 
eifects, 160 and 7iote 2 ; holds Hast- 
ing at bay for a year, 164 ; his nego- 
tiations with Hasting, 164; rising 
of the Danelaw against him, 164; 
defends Exeter, 165 ; cuts off the 
retreat of the Danes on the Lea, 
166; his mode of life, 167, 168 and 



notes ; his love of strangers, 168 and 
notes ; his court, 172, 173 ; his bud- 
get, 173, 174; his foreign policy, 
175 ; his dealings with the North 
Welsh, 175, 176; his alliance with 
the Scot kingdom, 178; his death, 
178; his character, 178-180 ; of- 
ficers of the royal household in his 
time, 523. 

Alfred, son of ^thelred, his residence 
at the Norman court, 454 ; prepares 
to invade England with Robert the 
Devil, 456 ; lands at Dover, 464 ; 
seized at Guildford, 464; blinded, 
464 ; dies at Ely, 464. 

-(Elfred, an English fugitive from Dei- 
ra, settles in Westmoringaland, 264. 

^Ifric, archbishop of Canterbury, his 
death, 385, note 3. 

^Ifric, archbishop of York, charges 
Godwine with the death of the seth- 
eling Alfred, 464, 466. 

iElfric succeeds ^thelmser as Ealdor- 
nian of Central Wessex, 357, note; 
negotiates a treaty with the Nor- 
wegian Wikings, 360, note i ; joint 
leader of the fyrd with Thored, 361 ; 
joins the Norwegians, 361 ; returns, 
and is reinstated, 366 ; becomes first 
among the ealdormen on death of 
^thelweard, 378 ; heads the fyrd of 
Wiltshire and Hampshire against 
Swein, 380 ; his failure and its 
causes, 381 and note i. 

^Ifric, son of ^Ifhere, succeeds his 
father as Ealdorman of Mercia, 342, 
T,S7,note; exiled, 357, 358. 

^Ifric, scholar of Bishop ^thelwold, 
his grammar and homilies, 325 ; 
writes an English version of the 
Bible, 325. 

^Ifric, kinsman of Godwine, elected 
archbishop of Canterbury, 505 ; po- 
litical import of his election, 506 ; 
set aside by Eadward, 506. 

jElfsige, Ealdorman, 298, note 2, 303, 
note I. 

^Ifstan, abbot of St. Augustine's at 
Canterbury, his struggle with Christ 
Church for the possession of Sand- 
wich, 429, note I. 

yElfthryth, daughter of vElfred, her ed- 
ucation, 150, note 2,, 182, note I ; mar- 
ries Baldwin II. of Flanders, 175, 

239- 
yElfthryth, daughter of Ealdorman Ord- 
gar, 303, 307, 7iote i, 308, notes ; wife 
of ^thelwold of East Anglia, 303, 



INDEX. 



567 



note 2 ; of Eadgar, 303, fiote i, 306, 
330 ; mother of ^thelied II., 306. 

^Ifwen, wife of ^thelstan the " Half- 
King," foster - mother of Eadgar, 
274. 

.iEthelbald, second son of ^thelwulf. 
King of Kent, 80 ; succeeds his fa- 
ther in Wessex, 80 ; his marriage 
with Judith, 79, note ; his death, 96. 

JLthelberht, third son of ^thelwulf, 
81 ; succeeds .^Ethelbald in Kent, 
81, note 2 ; in Wessex, 81 ; his 
death, 81,96. 

.(Ethelberht, king of Kent, gives Bish- 
op Mellitus the site for St. Paul's 
Church, 436 ; his laws, 20 and 7iotes 
I and 2. 

-.-Ethelberht, schoolmaster at York, 41 ; 
Alcuin educated under, 41 ; suc- 
ceeds Ecgberht as archbishop of 
York, 41 ; rebuilds the minster, 41. 

^thelflaed (daughter of Alfred), wife 
of ^thelred; Ealdorman of Mercia, 
138, 7iote 2 ; joint-ruler of Mercia 
with yEthelred, 188 ; restores Ches- 
ter, 186, 422 ; seizes the line of the 
Watling Street, 190 ; fortifies Scar- 
gate and Bridgenorth, 190; Tam- 
worth and Stafford, 192 ; Eddis- 
bury and Warwick, 193 ; Cherbury, 
Warbury, and Runcorn, 194 ; takes 
Derby and Leicester, 198 ; receives 
the submission of York, 198 and 
7iote 3 ; her death, 198 ; its date, 
183, 7iote 3 ; account of her cam- 
paigns in the Chronicle, 183. 

.^thelflsed, niece of ^thelstan, a kins- 
woman of Dunstan, 270, 7iote 1. 

.^thelflaed, daughter of .^Elfgar, mar- 
ries Eadmund, 250. 

^thelflaed the White, first wife of 
Eadgar, and mother of Eadward 
the Martyr, 306. 

^thelgar. Bishop of Crediton, possi- 
bly a kinsman of Dunstan, 270, 
7iote I. 

^thelgifu influences Eadwig against 
Dunstan, 294 ; causes Dunstan to be 
outlawed, 296 ; marries her daugh- 
ter to Eadwig, 298. 

iEthelhelm, Ealdorman of Dorset, de- 
feated and slain by the Wikings, 
72. 

.^thelings, their original distmction 
from the ceorls, 34 ; their relation 
to the tribal king, 34 ; their altered 
position on the extinction of the 
smaller kingdoms, 34 ; displaced by 



the thegns, 34 ; answer to the Scan- 
dinavian jarls, 55. 

^tlielm. Archbishop of Canterbury, 
said to be a kinsman of Dunstan, 
and to have brought him to court, 
270 and 7iote l, 271, 7tote i ; his 
death, 271, 7iote i. 

^thelmffir, kinsman of Eadwig, 294. 

^thelmasr, Ealdorman of Hampshire, 
357, 7tote I ; his death, 357. 

^thelmaer succeeds ^thelweard as 
Ealdorman of Western Wessex, 
394 ; submits to Swein, 394. 

yEthelmser, brother of Stigand, suc- 
ceeds him as Bishop of Elmham, 

538- 

^thelnoth, Ealdorman of Somerset, 
106. 

JLthelred, fourth son of .^thelwulf, 
King of Wessex, 82; his accession 
marks a new step in the consolida- 
tion of Wessex, 82, 7iote i ; marches 
to aid Burhred against the Danes, 
90 ; failure of their joint attack on 
the Danes at Nottingham, 91 ; de- 
feated by the Danes near Reading, 
97 ; his victory at Ashdown, 98 ; 
mortally wounded at Merton, 99 ; 
his death, 99 and 7iote 3 ; his burial 
at Wimborne, 100. 

.iEthelred II., son of Eadgar and 
yElfthryth, 307 ; his adherents, 337 ; 
his coronation, 341 and 7tote i ; 
quarrels with Dunstan, 342, 343 ; 
materials and authorities for his 
reign, 355, 7iote 1 ; his title of" Un- 
raedig,"356; his character, 356 ; his 
policy towards the ealdormanries, 
358, 382 ; his outer difficulties, 358, 
359 ; makes a treaty with the Nor- 
wegian Wikings, 360 ; with Richard 
of Normandy, 360, 361 and 7iote ; 
breach of treaty with the Norwe- 
gians, 361 ; causes .^Ifgar to be 
blinded, 363 ; gathers an army at 
Andover, 364; makes a truce with 
Swein and Olaf, 364 ; makes a treaty 
with Olaf, 365 ; weakness of the 
English defence under him, 366, 
367 ; engages a fleet of Danish 
mercenaries, 367 ; makes descents 
on the Isle of Man and Cumber- 
land, 368 ; on the Cotentin, 368 ; 
his marriage with Emma of Nor- 
mandy, 370, 377 ; its effects, 376, 
377 ; number and order of the eal- 
dormen under him, 377, 378; sends 
Leofsige to buy off the pirates, 378; 



568 



INDEX. 



makes ^fic high reeve, 378 and 
note 4 ; policy of his employment 
of hired Danes, 379 and note 3 ; 
massacre of St. Brice's day, 380 ; 
makes Eadric high reeve, 383 ; 
holds the Danes in check on the 
south coast, 384 ; buys a truce with 
them, 385 ; exacts an oath of alle- 
giance from his subjects, 385 ; his 
measures of defence, 385,386; gath- 
ers a fleet at Sandwich, 386, 428, 
note I ; its failure, 390 ; buys the 
withdrawal of the Danes, 392 ; hires 
Thurkill, 392 ; defends London 
against Swein, 394; sends his wife 
and sons to Normandy, 395 ; his 
flight and its consequences, 395 ; 
his return, 396 ; dissensions in his 
court, 397; withdraws to London, 
398 ; dies there, 399 ; his financial 
and administrative organization, 
387-390 ; his fiscal revolution, 413 ; 
growth of the administrative system 
under him, 411-413 ; his creation 
of the head thegn or high reeve, 
412, 524 ; his regulations concerning 
the trade of London, 445 ; coins of, 
struck at Bristol, 426, note i. 

^thelred, son of jEthelwold Moll, ex- 
pels Alchred from Northumbria,39 ; 
driven into exile, 39 ; restored, 40 ; 
slays Osred and the children of 
Alfwold, 40 ; slain, 42. 

^thelred, Ealdorman of Mercia, 137, 
138, note 2 ; his titles, 138, note 2 ; 
married to .^Ethelflaed, 138, note 2 ; 
London intrusted to him by .Alfred, 
144 ; holds the line of the Thames 
against the Danes, 164 ; attacks the 
Wikings' camp in Essex, 165 ; his 
victory at Buttington, 165 ; drives 
the Danes from Chester, 166 ; re- 
stores it, 186 and note 2 ; probably 
rears the castle-mound at Oxford, 
421 ; his gifts to Bishop Werfrhh, 
423 ; his death, 188. 

^thelric. Bishop of Selsey, conse- 
crated by Stigand, 558. 

^thelstan, son of Eadward the Elder, 
his childhood, 168 ; his accession, 
209 ; chosen king by the Mercians, 
209, note 2 ; hallowed at Kingston, 
209, note 2 ; personal appearance, 
209; his character and that of his 
reign, 210 ; authorities for his reign, 
209, note 4 ; knighted in his child- 
hood by Alfred, 168, 210 ; first king 
of West Saxons, Mercians, and 



Northumbrians, 46 ; league of the 
Danes, Scots, and Welsh against, 
210; its submission, 211 and note 2 ; 
reduces the North-Welsh chiefs to 
subjection and tribute, 211 ; drives 
the West Welsh from Exeter, 211 ; 
defeats the Cornwealas at Bolleit, 
212 ; becomes King of Northumbria, 
212; composition of his Witenage- 
mots, 212, 213, note i ; their national 
character, 213, note I, 215 ; his for- 
eign policy, 210, 239 ; his alliance 
with the northern clergy, 213; his 
favor to the Northmen, 214; his 
character in the Northern sagas, 214 ; 
his restoration of public order, 216 ; 
petitioned by the Witan of Kent to 
enforce justice, 29 ; regulation of 
justice under him, 216, 217; scope 
of his laws, 216, note 4, 225, note 2 ; 
his law concerning property and 
trade, 218; concerning slaves, 320 ; 
his royal style, 231, 232, 257, note 
3 ; Northumbria rises against him, 
232 ; his foreign alliances, 240, 241 ; 
marches into the north and sends a 
fleet to harry the Scottish coast, 
242 and note 4 ; receives a fresh 
submission from Constantine, 242 ; 
withdrawal of the Northern jarls 
from his court, 243 and note 2 ; gen- 
eral rising of the North against, 243 ; 
his victory at Brunanburh, 244 ; 
failure of his plans of national union, 
246 ; razes the Danish fortress at 
York, 432 ; his alliance with Nor- 
way, 251 ; sets Eric Bloody-axe as 
under -king in Northumbria, 252; 
gives shelter to Lewis from over- 
sea, 254 ; his negotiations with Hugh 
of Paris and William Longsword, 
254 ; his alliance with Lewis and 
Arnulf against the Normans, 256 ; 
sends a fleet to the coast of Bou- 
logne, 257 ; his pilgrimage to Glas- 
tonbury, 271, note 2 ; his death, 257 ; 
its date, 257 and note ; its effect on 
Prankish politics, 261 ; popular bal- 
lads of his life, preserved by William 
of Malmesbury, 284, note 2. 

^thelstan, son of ^thelwulf, under- 
king of Kent, 75 ; defeats the Wik- 
ings at Sandwich, 75 ; his death, 79, 
note 2, 80. 

^thelstan, Ealdorman of East Anglia, 
249 ; native of Devon, 249, 7iote 2 ; 
his possible descent from .^thel- 
red I., 249, note 2 ; nicknamed the 



INDEX. 



569 



" Half-King," 250 ; his wife ^Ifwen 
the foster-mother of Eadgar, 274 ; 
Primarius under Eadmund, 274 and 
iiote 4 ; his increased influence under 
Eadred, 275 ; his friendship with 
Dunstan, 274 ; withdraws to a mon- 
astery, 297 ; his ealdormanry parted 
among his four sons, 297 ; date of 
his retirement, 297, note 3. 

iiEthelstan, Eaklorman, distinguished 
from ^thelstan of East Anglia, 297, 
note 3 ; joins the revolt against Ead- 
wig, 299, note 2. 

yEthelstan, chaplain to Alfred, 150. 

^thelstan, see Guthrum. 

^thelwald, son of ^thelred I., claims 
the crown against Eadward the 
Elder, 182 ; driven out of Wessex, 
becomes King of Northumbria, 183 ; 
rouses the Danes of East Anglia to 
attack Wessex, 183 ; his defeat and 
death, 183. 

^thelweard, son of Alfred, his edu- 
cation, 181. 

iEthelweard of East Anglia, son of 
^thelwine, slain at Assandun, 401. 

iEthelweard made Ealdorman of the 
Western Provinces by Eadward the 
Martyr, 357, note i ; becomes first 
of the ealdormen on death of ^thel- 
vvine, 357, note i, 364, note 2 ; nego- 
tiates a treaty of subsidy with the 
Norwegian Wikings, 360, note i ; 
negotiates a truce with Swein and 
Olaf, 365 ; and a treaty between 
Olaf and yEthelred, 365 ; his death, 
378. 

^thelweard the historian, descendant 
of yEthelred I., 49, note i ; probably 
the ealdorman of that name, 49, 7tote 
I ; character of his Chronicle, 187, 
note I. 

iEthelweard ( friend of ^Ifric ), 325 
note 2 ; induces ^Ifric to translate 
the Bible, 326. 

^thelwine becomes Ealdorman of 
East Anglia, 303, note i ; upholds 
the cause of the monks, 337 ; sup- 
ports the claim of ^thelred to the 
crown, 337 ; his share in the mur- 
der of Eadward, 341 ; becomes first 
of the ealdormen on ^Ifhere's 
death, 357, note i ; his death, 357 
and note I. 

^thelwold, Dunstan's chief scholar 
and assistant, 283 ; intends to go 
abroad for study, but is prevented 
by Eadred, 283, note 2 ; made Abbot 



of Abingdon, 283 and note 2 ; founds 
a school there, 283 ; sends Osgar to 
learn the Benedictine rule at Fleury, 
329 and note 2 ; made Bishop of 
Winchester, 330 ; his school there, 
325 ; introduces monks into his ca- 
thedral church and diocese, 330 ; 
possibly author of the last continu- 
ation of the Winchester Chronicle, 
326; adheres to Eadwig, 299, note 
2. 

iEthel wold, Ealdorman of East Anglia, 
joins the revolt against Eadwig, 300, 
7iote I ; marries Ordgar's daughter 
^Ifthryth, 303, note 2 ; his death, 
303, notes r and 2. 

^thelwold Moll seizes the Northum- 
brian throne, 39 ; his victory at the 
Eildon Hills, 39 ; marries a daugh- 
ter of Offa, 39 ; his death, 39. 

^thelwulf, son of Ecgberht, King of 
Kent, 66, note i ; succeeds Ecgberht 
in Wessex, 70 ; his character, 70, 
71 ; defeats the Danes at Aclea, 71, 
76 ; defeated by the Wikings at 
Charmouth, 72 ; his alliance with 
the emperor, 76 ; conquers Angle- 
sea, 77 ; his supposed institution of 
tithes, 77, note i ; his pilgrimage to 
Rome, 77 ; his alliance with Charles 
the Bald, 76, 78; his marriage with 
Judith, 78, 79, note i ; revolt of 
Wessex against, 80 ; decision of the 
Witenagemot on the succession, 80 ; 
his settlement of the succession, 79, 
7iote 2 ; retires into the Eastern 
Kingdom and resigns Wessex to 
^thelbald, 80 ; his death, 81 ; his 
bequest of the crown set aside by 
the Witan, 81, note 2. 

iEtheric, an East Saxon, charged with 
support of Swein, 363, note 3. 

Agriculture, its prominence in the laws 
of Ine, 21 and note i. 

Airsome, probable origin of its found- 
ers, 112. 

Alan, Duke of Brittany, expelled by 
William Longsword, 241 ; takes ref- 
uge at the court of yEthelstan, 241 ; 
ward of Eadward the Elder, 241, 
note I ; returns, 255. 

Alban, St., church dedicated to him in 
Wood Street, its origin and history, 
439 and note I. 

"Alban," or "Albania," supersedes 
"Pict-land," 178 and note i. 

Alchred succeeds .-Ethelwold Moll as 
King of Northumbria, 39 ; driven out 



570 



INDEX. 



by ^thelred, takes refuge among 
the Picts, 39; claims descent from 
Ida, 39, note 4. 

Alclvvyd captured by the Picts, 263. 

Alcuin, his birth and education, 40, 
41 ; goes to Rome with ^ihelberht, 
41 ; master of the school at Yorii, 
41 and note i ; fetches the pall for 
Archbishop ^Ethelberht, 41 ; his 
meeting with Charles the Great at 
Parma, 41 ; his work among the 
Franks, 41 ; his return to Northum- 
bria, 42 ; intercedes with Charles 
for the Northumbrians on the mur- 
der of ^thelred, 42. 

Aldate or Aldad, St., church at Oxford 
dedicated to, 421. 

Aldermanbury, its probable origin, 

443- 
Aid-gate, soke of, its rise in Eadgar's 

day, 445 ; held by Queen Matilda, 

446, note I. 
Aldulf, bishop of Worcester, 327, note 

I. 
Alen9on, William at, 490. 
Alexander II., Pope, sends legates to 

England, 559. 
Alfwold, son of Oswulf, succeeds 

.^thelred in Northumbria,39; slain, 

39-. 

Allegiance, personal, growth of the 
principle of, 200 ; its influence on 
the English kingship, 201 ; oath of, 
required by Eadward the Elder, 
202, 203 ; by Eadmund, 203 ; by 
^thelred XL, 385. 

All-Hallows, church at Barking, 438, 
note I, 446 ; at Oxford, 420. 

Aire, baptism of Guthrum at, 120. 

Ambleside, 265. 

Andover, treaty made with Swein and 
Olaf at, 365 ; treaty between ^thel- 
red and Olaf at, 365. 

Anlaf, see Olaf. 

Andredsweald, the, the Wikings in, 
163 ; its extent, 163, note 4. 

Anglesea conquered by ^thelwulf 
and Burhred, 77. 

Anglia, East, descents of th^ Wikings 
on, 74 ; Danes winter in, 87 ; con- 
quered by Ivar (Inguar) and Hub- 
ba, 87, note i, 91 ; divided by Guth- 
rum, 118; Danish settlements in, 
119; their character, 119; rises 
against Eadward, 196; submits to 
him, 197; the (Danish) army of, 
swear allegiance to him, 202 ; its 
" folks," 227 ; retention of tribal 



nomenclature in, 228, note i ; late 
introduction of the shire - system 
into, 228, note i ; ealdormanry of, 
its creation, 249 and note i ; its ex- 
tent, 250 and note i ; parted among 
the four sons of ^thelstan, 297 ; re- 
vival of monasticism in, 330 ; at- 
tacked by Swein, 381 ; ruled by 
Ulfcytel, 378, 381 ; its fyrd defeated 
by Thurkil], 391 ; kings of, see Ead- 
mund, Guthrum ; ealdormen of, see 
^thelstan,yEthelweard,/Ethelwine, 
iEthelvvold, Thurkill ; earls of, see 
^Ifgar, Gyrth, Harold. 

"Anglo-Saxon," true meaning and 
use of the phrase, 184, 7iote 2. 

" Angul-Saxons," King of the, usual 
style of Eadward the Elder, 184 and 
note I ; of ^thelstan, 231. 

Anjou, its rise, 489 ; counts of, see 
Geoffrey. 

Aquitaine, the Truce of God instituted 
in, 471. 

Archbishops of Canterbury, their posi- 
tion, 68 ; supersede the West-Saxon 
bishops as national advisers of the 
crown, 305 ; their relation to the 
crown altered by the new system 
of administration, 412 ; see ^Ifheah, 
^Ifric, ^thelm, Ceolnoth, Dunstan, 
Eadsige, Odo, Plegmund, Robert, 
Sigeric, Stigand, Theodore ; arch- 
bishops of York, their importance, 
89 ; see Jilfric, JEthelberht, Cyne- 
sige, Ecgberht, Ealdred, Oswald, 
Rod ward, Wulfstan. 

Archill revolts against Tostig, 542, 
note. 

Armagh, Wikings at, 64, 71. 

Army, its reorganization under iEl- 
fred, 130 ; under .^Ethelred and Ead- 
ric, 385, 386. 

Arnulf, King of the East Franks, his 
victory over the Wikings at the 
Dyle, 163. 

Arnulf, Count of Flanders, son of Bald- 
win and ^Ifthryth, 241 ; takes 
Montreuil, 255 ; his attack on Pon- 
thieu supported by ^thelstan, 255 ; 
his war with William Longsword, 
256 ; h!s alliance with ^thelstan 
and Lewis against the Normans, 256; 
joins Hugh and William against 
Lewis, 256 ; gives a refuge at Ghent 
to Dunstan, 296 ; introduces the 
weaving trade into Flanders, 493. 

Ashdown, battle of, 98 ; Danish lead- 
ers slain at, 93 ancl note I, 99. 



INDEX. 



571 



Assandun, battle of, 400 ; great nobles 
slain at, 401,403; Eadric charged 
with desertion at, 401 ; Cnut builds 
a church at, 415, 537; Stigand priest 

of, 525, 557- 

Asser, authority of his work, 94, note 
3 ; his visit to .'Elfred, 151, 152. 

Athelney, Alfred encamps at, 105 ; 
his jewel found at, 105 ; i^lfred 
founds a monastery at, 127, 169; 
John the Old Saxon made abbot of, 
151, 170; a scholar of "Pagan" 
race at, 169 and note 3 ; difficulty of 
obtaining English monks for it, 
169, 170 and note i ; settlement of 
strangers at, 170 and note 2 ; failure 
of the scheme, 171. 

Aylesford, reconciliation of Eadmund 
and Eadric at, 400. 

B 

Baeda, Alfred's translation of, 156, 
157 and note 3, 160 and note i. 

Badulf, last English bishop of Whit- 
hern, 264, note I. 

Bsegsecg, King of Bernicia, joins Guth- 
rum's attack on Wessex, 93 ; slain 
at Ashdown, 93, note i, 99. 

Bakewell fortified by Eadward the 
Elder, 205. 

Baldwin Iron-arm, Count of Flanders, 
his marriage, 175. 

Baldwin II., Count of Flanders, his 
marriage with Alfred's daughter, 
^Ifthryth, 175, 239. 

Baldwin (III.) of Mons, 493. 

Baldwin (IV.) the Bearded, restored 
to power by Robert the Devil, 455 ; 
marries a daughter of Richard the 
Good, 497. 

Baldwin (V.) of Lille, marries the sis- 
ter of King Henry of France, 494, 
497 ; revolts against the emperor, 
497 j William's proposed alliance 
with, 497, 498 ; its policy, 499 ; his 
alliance with Godwine, 499 ; excom- 
municated by Leo IX., 501 ; perse- 
veres in his rebellion, 502 ; submits, 
503 ; renews his alliance with God- 
wine, 503 ; shelters Godwine and 
his sons, 510; sends embassies to 
Eadward in Godwine's behalf, 514. 

" Baldwin's land," name given to 
Flanders, 466, 499. 

Baldwin, chaplain to Eadward the 
Confessor, 526, 527; a monk of 
St. Denis, 527 ; his skill in medi- 
cine, 527 ; Prior of Deerhurst, 527 ; 



made Abbot of St. Edmundsbury, 

527- 

Ballads, English, preserved by Will- 
iam of Malmesbury, 284, note 2. 

Bamborough sacked by the Norwe- 
gians, 363. 

Barking, church of All Hallows at, 
438, note I, 446 ; Erkenwald dies at, 
437 ; nuns of, their struggle with the 
Londoners for his remains, 437. 

Barton, manor of, its connection with 
Bristol, 426, note 2. 

Basileus, style of iEthelstan, 234. 

Basing, the Danes checked at, 99. 

Bath, Eadgar crowned at, 336 ; sub- 
mission of Western Wessex to 
Swein at, 394. 

Battle Abbey, site of Harold's stand- 
ard marked by its high altar, 551. 

Bayeux, capital of the Bessin, 237 ; at- 
tacked by the Bretons, 240 ; gather- 
ing of the rebel Norman barons at, 
487 ; Odo, Bishop of, see Odo. 

Beaduheard, the king's reeve at Dor- 
chester, slain by the Wikings, 49. 

Bec-Herlouin, its situation, 235 ; Lan- 
franc at, 485 ; fame of its school, 
485, 486. 

Bedford, its chief men submit to Ead- 
ward the Elder, 195, 203 ; taken and 
fortified by Eadward, 195 ; attacked 
by the Danes, 196; by Thurkill, 
391- 

Bedfordshire, its origin, 228 ; included 
in the East-Anglian ealdormanry, 
250, note I. 

Benedict, anti-pope, gives the pallium 
to Stigand, 558. 

Benet, St., church iil London dedicated 
to him, 436, 437 and note 3. 

Beorhtwulf, King of Mercia, defeated 
by the Wikings, 75. 

Beorn, son of Ulf, his presence in Eng- 
land, 469 ; made Earl of the Middle- 
English, 481 ; extent of his earldom, 
482 ; opposes Swein's demands for 
restoration, 504 ; consents to act as 
mediator for Swein, 504 ; murdered, 
504- 

Beowulf, song of, 50. 

Berkshire, its fyrd defeats the Wik- 
ings, 81 ; the Danes in, 94; mean- 
ing of the name, 94 and note i ; 
character of the country, 94 ; raids 
of Hastings upon, 164; earliest de- 
pendency of Wessex, 224 ; detached 
from Wessex and joined with Here- 
ford, etc., under Swein, 481. 



572 



INDEX. 



Bernicia ravaged by Halfdene, loi ; 
remains an English state, 176; its 
alliance with y^lfred, 177; rising of 
its people against ^thelstan, 243 ; 
Oswulf high reeve of, 281 ; united 
with Deira under Oswulf, 281 ; un- 
der Waltheof, 340 ; under Uhtred, 
382; under Siward, 477; its inde- 
pendence of the Danelaw, 451 ; its 
northern part becomes Scottish, 
452 ; see Northumbria, 

Bessin, the, granted to Hrolf, 237 ; 
wrested by the Normans from the 
Bretons, 240; stronghold of heathen- 
dom in Normandy, 372 ; Richard 
the Fearless reared there, 372 ; its 
revolt against William, 486. 

Beverley, ^^thelstan's grants to, 213 
and «<?/<? 3. 

Bible, ^Ifric's translation of, 326. 

Billingsgate, 445. 

Biorn, son of Harald Fairhair, 1 13 ; 
called " the merchant," 1 13, 430, tiote 
3 ; King of Westfold, 430, tioie 3 ; 
slain by his brother Eric, 252. 

Bishops, English, their national char- 
acter, 68; their relation to the 
crown and the ealdormen, 293, 
333 ; growth of their political im- 
portance, 333 ; appointed by the 
crown, 333, 505 ; usually promoted 
from the Royal Chapel, 413. 

Bishopsgate, its site, 441. 

Bishops-hill (York), churches of St. 
Mary in, 434; remains of Roman 
work in, 434. 

" Bishop's shire," old name for a dio- 
cese, 222. 

Boethius, Alfred's translation of, 156, 
157, 161. 

Bokings, their "ham" in the upper 
valley of the Ouse (Buckingham), 
194. 

Bolleit, ^thelstan defeats the Corn- 
wealas at, 212. 

"Boors," 316. 

Bordeaux conquered by the Wikings, 

74- 

Boston, its rise and growth, 432. 

Botulf, St., abbey of, the town of Bos- 
ton grows up round it, 432 ; church 
in London dedicated to him, 446. 

Boulogne, Charles the Great at, 61 ; 
muster of a Wiking fleet at, 163 ; 
counts of, see Eustace. 

Brentford, Danes defeated at, 399. 

Bretons, the, attack Normandy, 240 ; 
repulsed, 241, 



Brice's day, St., massacre of the Danes 
on, 380. 

Bridgenorth, Danes encamp at, 166 ; 
fortified by ^thelilasd, 190. 

Bridges, their construction imposed as 
a penance, 323. 

Brionne, home of Herlouin, 485 ; 
counts of, their descent from Gun- 
nor, 374. 

Bristol, its rise, 426 ; its mint, 426 ; its 
condition under Eadward the Con- 
fessor, 426 and fwie 2 ; its feorm, 
426, note 2; its slave-trade with Ire- 
land, 427 ; Harold and Leofwine 
sail to Dublin from, 510. 

Britain, character of its population in 
Ecgberht's day, 2 ; mixture of races 
in, 3 ; character of the country, 4 ; 
progress of cultivation in, 4, 5 ; in- 
dustrial life, 6, 7 ; first appearance 
of the Wikings in, 48, 49 ; impor- 
tance of its conquest to the Wikings, 
82 ; first appearance of the Danes 
in, 83, 86 ; concentration of the Wik- 
ing forces on, 103. 

Britons, see Cumbria, Strathclyde, 
Welsh. 

Brittany, claim of the Norman dukes 
to supremacy over, 240 ; influence 
of ^thelstan over, 241 ; he makes 
its peace with Normandy, 255 ; sub- 
dued by Robert the Devil, 455 ; 
dukes of, see Alan. 

Bruges, its trade, 499 ; Harthacnut's 
invasion planned at, 499; Swein, 
son of Godwine, takes refuge at, 
483 ; Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, 
at, 505 ; Godwine at, 513. 

Brunanburh, battle of, 243 ; authorities 
for, 243 and note 3 ; its imiJortance, 

245- 

Brytenwealda, style of .^thelstan, 231 
and note 5. 

Bryhtferth, Ealdorman, 303, note i. 

Buckingham, southernmost of the Dan- 
ish settlements in Mid-Britain, 194; 
held by Jarl Thurcytel, 195 ; taken 
and fortified by Eadward the Elder, 

195- 
Buckinghamshire, its origin, 228 ; 
overrun by Thurkill, 391 ; joined 
with Essex, etc., under Leofwine, 

544- 

Bucklersbury, site of the port of Lon- 
don, 438. 

Budget, Alfred's, 173, 174. 

Bull How, 265. 

Burhred, King of Mercia, conquers 



INDEX. 



573 



Anglesea, 77 ; marries Alfred's sis- 
ter, 96 ; death at Rome, loi. 

Burislaf, king of the Wends, 352, w^'/'i? i. 

Bur-thegn, 523. 

Butler, see Cup-thegn. 

Butsecarls of Hastings, 513, note 2 ; of 
Sandwich, 428 and note i. 

Buttermere, 265. 

Buttington, battle of, 165. 

" By " in place-names, mark of Danish 
settlement, in. 

Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex, 303, 
note I ; marries ^Iflaed, daughter 
of ^Ifgar, Ealdorman of Essex, and 
succeeds his father-in-law, 250; sup- 
ports the cause of the monks, 337; 
slain at Maldon, 354. 

Byrhtnoth, brother of Eadric, 390, 
note I. 

Caen, council at, enacts tha observance 
of the Truce of God, 471. 

Caithness, Northmen in, 63, 102, 207 ; 
conquered by the Orkney Jarls, 538. 

Calne, Witenagemot at, 338. 

Cambridge, the Danes at, 102 : they 
submit to Eadward the Elder, 197, 
202 ; lawmen at, 442, note 3. 

Cambridgeshire represents South 
Gyrwa-land, 227 ; forms part of the 
East Anglian ealdormany, 250, notei. 

Canterbury, its wealth and importance, 
74 ; raid of the Wikings on, 75 ; 
sacked by them, 75 ; mint at, 219 ; 
secular clerks at, 331 ; sacked by 
Thurkill, 392 ; the body of St. iElf- 
heah translated to, 415 ; Christ 
church at, Cnut's grants to, 428 and 
note 2 ; archbishops of, their posi- 
tion, 68; supersede the West-Saxon 
bishops as national advisers of the 
crown, 305 ; their relation to the 
crown altered by the new system of 
administration, 412 ; see JEMh&ah, 
yElfriCj^thelm, Ceoluoth, Dunstan, 
Eadsige, Odo, Plegmund, Robert, 
Sigeric, Stigand, Theodore. 

Carham, battle of, 452. 

Carl, son of Thurbrand, 478, 7iote. 

" Carl," Scandinavian form of " ceorl," 

5 S.- 
Carlisle destroyed by the Danes, 102 ; 

its unbroken life, 264. 
Carloman, King of the West Franks, 
defeats Guthrum at Saucourt, 141 ; 
his death, 141. 
Cattle, the general medium of ex- 
change in early ages, 218. 



Caupmanna-thorpe, settlement of Dan- 
ish traders, 113 and note 2. 

Ceadwalla, King of Wessex, his pil- 
grimage, baptism, and death, 16. 

Celchyth, see Chelsea. 

Cenwalch, King of Wessex, places the 
royal seat at Winchester, 222. 

Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, 
his alliance with Ecgberht, 70. 

Ceolwulf set up as King of Mercia by 
the Danes, loi, 116 and note i. 

Ceorl, the English, 55 ; displaced by 
the thegn, 129,315; gradually de- 
graded into the vellein, 345. 

Chancellor, office of, its origin, 476, 
7to/e, 526 ; see Leofric, Reginbold, 
Wulfwig. 

Chancery, see Chapel. 

Chapel, the royal, its institution, 413 ; 
its origin and growth, 523, 524 ; later 
developments from, 525 ; its com- 
position in Cnut's day, 525 ; Lothar- 
ingians in, 525 ; its organization un- 
der Eadward, 476, note 526 ; Norman 
clerks in, 526. 

Chaplains, the king's, their adminis- 
trative work, 413. 

Chapmanslade, 113, note 2. 

Chapmen, 322; law of Alfred con- 
cerning, 323 ; of Ine, 323, note i ; 
first mention of, 323, 7iote i. 

Charles the Bald, his alliance with 
^thelwulf, 78 ; Alfred at his court, 
95 ; drives the Northmen from An- 
gers, 102. 

Charles the Fat defeats Hasting at 
Haslo, 142. 

Charles the Great, his meeting with 
Alcuin, 41 ; his wrath against the 
Northumbrians allayed by Alcuin's 
intercession, 42 ; his precautions 
against the Northmen, 61. 

Charles the Simple disputes the West- 
Frankish throne with Odo, 234 ; 
grants to the Northmen the terri- 
tory between the mouth of the Seine 
and the Epte, 234; his alliance with 
Hrolf against the dukes of Paris, 
236 ; marries a daughter of Eadward 
the Elder, 239 ; his crown claimed 
against him by Rudolf of Burgundy, 
239 ; renews his alliance with the 
Normans, 239 ; his death, 240. 

Charmouth, battle of, 72. 

Cheap, East, its origin and growth, 
440 and note i ; ward of, the oldest 
part of London, 438 ; its extent, 
438- 



574 



INDEX. 



Cheddar, Eadmund's hunting adven- 
ture in, 274. 

Chelsea (Celchyth), synod of, 321. 

Cherbury fortified by ^Ethelflaed, 194. 

Chertsey, monks of, 437. 

Cheshire, salt-mines in, 7, note; its 
origin as a shire, 226. 

Chester occupied by Hasting, 166; 
besieged by iEthelred, 166; its im- 
portance, 185 ; *' renewed " by ^Eth- 
elred and iEthelflaed, 186 and note 
2, 423 ; church of St. Werburgh at, 
186 ; its growth, 186, note 3 ; its 
trade, 423 ; provision for its secur- 
ity, 424 ; its churches, 424 ; traces 
of Danish settlement in, 425 ; its 
lawmen, 425 ; its market, 425 ; 
church of St. John without the 
walls, 425 ; legend of Eadgar's tri- 
umph at, 425, 310, note 4 ; character 
of its surrounding country, 425 ; sub- 
mits to William, 555. 

Chester-le-Street, Dunstan visits St. 
Cuthbert's shrine at, 281. 

Chesterford, battle of, 279. 

Chichester, mint at, 219. 

Chippenham, Danes at, 104 ; Asser's 
account of its situation, 224, note i. 

Chronicle, the English, its origin, 157- 
159 and notes ; its growth under Al- 
fred, 159 and note T„ 160 ; its account 
of the reign of Eadvvard the Elder, 
181, note ; of the reign of yEthelstan, 
20% note ^-j chronological difficulties 
in, 183, 7tote 3 ; poems in, 243, note 
3 ; its character during the reigns 
of Eadvvard and ^thelstan, 284 ; its 
praise of Eadgar, 305, note, 306 ; 
Chronicle of Peterborough, 327, note 
I ; Abingdon, 355, note i ; Winches- 
ter, 1 58, 1 59, 183, note 3, 209 and note 
2 ; Worcester, 183, note 3, 326, 327. 

Chrism-loosing, 120, 7tote i. 

Christ church, Canterbury, Cnut's 
grants to, 428 and note 2. 

Christianity, range of its influence, 8, 
9 ; its strife with heathenism, 9, 1 1 ; 
it creates a new social class, 12, 13 ; 
modifies township into parish, 13- 
T5 ; links England with Europe, 15- 
19; its effect on early law, 19-21 ; 
on jurisprudence, 21-23 ; on the 
feud, 23-27 ; on heathen literature, 
324 ; on education, 325 ; on slavery, 
320. 

Christina, daughter of the setheling 
Eadward, 536. 

Church, the English, its industrial 



work in Dorset, 6 ; its character 
after the Danish wars, 12 ; its con- 
dition in Northumbria, 40 ; its rela- 
tions with the Mercian kings and 
with Ecgberht, 68 ; its alliance with 
the Monarchy, 69, 304 ; its efforts in 
behalf of slaves, 320 ; Cnut's deal- 
ings with, 415 ; its reform under the 
Confessor, 495, 496. 

Churches, three classes of, 13 ; become 
the centres of village life, 14 ; their 
date indicated by their dedications, 
420, 421 and note i, 423, note, 437, 
note 3, 447. 

Churchyard, the tunmoot held in the, 
14. 

Clair-on-Epte, treaty of, 234. 

Cledauc, King of the North Welsh, 
becomes subject to Eadward the 
Elder, 200, note i. 

Clergy, the, new social class, 12 ; its 
rights, 12; "regular" and "secu- 
lar," 12,331; decline of discipline 
in the Danish wars, 332. 

Cleveland, its settlement by the Danes, 
III. 

Clifford's Tower, at York, marks the 
site of the Danish fortress, 432. 

Cluny, monastic reform at, its influence 
on England, 329. 

Cnichten-gild at Aldgate, 446 ; its pos- 
sible connection with the older frith- 
gild and the later merchant - gild, 
443 ; at Nottingham, 422. 

Cnut, son of Swein, chosen king by 
the Danes at Gainsborough, 396 ; 
.-Ethelred marches against, 396 ; 
mutilates English hostages, 402 ; 
returns to Denmark, 396 ; ravages 
the coast of Wessex, 397 ; joined 
by Eadric, 398 ; receives the sub- 
mission of Wessex and Northum- 
bria, 398 ; lays siege to London, 
399 ; meets Eadmund on the bor- 
ders of Wiltshire, 399 ; renews the 
siege of London, 400 ; forsaken by 
Eadric, 400; causes Uhtred to be 
slain, 400 ; gives his earldom to Eric, 
400, 403 ; defeats Eadmund at As- 
sandun, 400 ; makes a treaty with 
Eadmund at Olney, 401 ; his age, 
402 ; his temper, 402 ; his character 
and that of his rule, 407-409 ; his 
dealings with the ealdormen, 403, 
41 1 ; murders a brother of Ead- 
mund, and drives his children into 
Hungary, 403 ; children of his first 
marriage, 404 ; marries Emma, 404 ; 



INDEX. 



5 7 5- 



■ contrasted with the earlier Danish 
conquerors, 406; makes England 
his centre, 407 ; sets aside Danes 
for Englishmen, 407 ; employs Eng- 
lish soldiers and English priests in 
the north, 407 ; banishes Thurkill 
and Eric, 407 ; sets Hakon as ruler 
in Norway, 407 ; sets Ulf as ruler in 
Denmark, 407, 408 ; elected and 
crowned at London, 408 ; renews 
Eadgar's laws, 408 ; dismisses his 
Danish fleet and host, 408 ; his hus- 
carls, 408, 414 ; visits Denmark, 
408 ; date of his accession to its 
throne, 408, note; his laws, 409; 
organization of England under him, 
409 ; makes Eadwulf Earl of North- 
umbria, 409 ; makes Wessex an earl- 
dom under Godwine, 410 ; makes 
Godwine his vice - gerent, 410 ; 
changes the caldormanries into 
earldoms, 411; continues /Ethel- 
red's administrative policy, 411,412; 
his dealings with the Church, 415 ; 
his character in English tradition, 
416 ; in the Sagas, 416 ; tradition 
of his visit to Ely, 417; peace of his 
reign, 417 ; his letter to his English 
people, 418; his prohibition of the 
slave - trade, 427 ; Norway revolts 
against him, 448 ; leaves Harthacnut 
ruler in Denmark, 44S ; goes to 
Rome, 449 ; secures the safety of 
the Alpine passes, 449 ; his meeting 
with the Emperor Conrad, 449 ; re- 
gains the land won from Denmark 
by Otto II., 449 ; betroths his daugh- 
ter to Conrad's son, 449 ; drives 
Olafout of Norway, 450 ; suppresses 
a Welsh rising, 450 ; Malcolm of 
Scotland submits to him, 452 ; grants 
Lothian to Malcolm, 453 ; his death, 
458 ; break-up of his empire, 458 ; 
extinction of his house, 459 ; per- 
manence and stability of his admin- 
istrative system, 475, note ; his chap- 
lains, 525. 

Codes, early English, 20 and note i. 

Coin, its early use in Kent, 218 ; grow- 
ing use of, 218, 219, 316, note i. 

Coinage the test of kingship, 138 ; 
Eadgar's coinage, 335, note 3. 

Coins, Anglo-Saxon, found at Delgany 
in Wicklow, 62, note 2 ; of Alfred, 
138, note I ; of Eadgar, struck at 
Dublin, 310; of iElthelred II. and 
Cnut, struck at Bristol, 426, note i. 

Colchester taken by the English, 196 ; 



rebuilt by Eadward the Elder, 197 ; 
Witenagemot at, 213, note i, 215, 
note 2. 

Coldingham burned by the Danes, loi. 

Commendation, growth of, 201. 

Conquest, the Danish, its significance, 
50, 123; its causes, 344 and note; 
authorities and materials for its his- 
tory, 355, note I ; difference between 
the earlier and the later, 404-406 ; 
its effect on English institutions, 
410. 

Conquest, the Norman, 554-556. 

Constable, see Horse-thegn. 

Constantine, King of Scots, his strug- 
gle with Thorstein and Sigurd, 102 ; 
cedes Caithness to them, 102 ; joins 
the Northern league against Ead- 
ward, 207 ; submits to Eadward, 
208 and note i ; to ^thelstan, 211, 
242 and 7iote 4; his alliance with 
Olaf and the Ostmen, 242, 243 ; de- 
feated at Brunanburh, 244; retires 
to a monastery, 262. 

Constantinople, English refugees at, 

553- 

Conrad, Emperor, his meeting with 
Cnut at Rome, 449 ; its results, 
449 ; betroths his son to Cnut's 
daughter, 449. 

Copsige, Tostig's deputy in Northum- 
bria, 542, note : seeks the Bernician 
earldom, 542, note; expels Oswulf, 
542, i2ote ; slain, 542, note. 

Corfe, Eadward the Martyr slain at, 
340. 

Cork founded by the Wikings, 71. 

Cornhill, soke of the bishops of Lon- 
don, 444; church of St. Peter on, 

444- 

Cornwall, revolt of, against Ecgberht, 
64; its final conquest, 211 ; early 
divisions of, 221 ; harried by Wik- 
ings, 366 ; bishop of, see Leofric. 

Coronation, its meaning and impor- 
tance, 295. 

Cotentin, the, conquered by William 
Longsword, 241 ; ^thelred II. re- 
pulsed in a descent on, 368 ; strong- 
hold of heathendom in Normandy, 
372 ; revolts against William the 
Conqueror, 487. 

Council, royal, first traces of its judi- 
cial authority, 133 ; its origin in the 
royal chapel, 413. 

Councils, Church, their canons against 
"heathendom" and witchcraft, 10, 
1 1 ; become merged in the Wite- 



576 



INDEX. 



nagemot, 333 ; see Caen, Chelsea, 
Rheims. 
Court, the king's, its character, 30 ; its 
means of subsistence, 30 ; its prog- 
resses, 31; its great officers, 173, 

523- 

Cranborne, manor of, 318, 319. 

Crediton, bishops of, see ^thelgar, 
Leofric. 

Crowland sacked by Danes, 91. 

Crown, the, earliest known instance of 
an attempt to bequeath, 81, note 2 ; 
main basis of its power, 414 ; sources 
of its revenue, 386, 387 and note 3 ; 
see King, Monarchy. 

Cuckamsly ( Cwichelmslov/e ), Danes 
at, 384. 

Cuerdale, coins of Alfred found at, 
138, note I. 

Cumberland, its origin as a shire, 228, 
note I, 266, note 2 ; ^thelred II. 
makes a descent on, 367 ; danger to 
England and Scotland from, 368 and 
note r. 

Cumbria ravaged by Halfdene, 102 
and note 2 ; its extent in the time 
of Eadmund, 263 ; its southern 
part called Westmoringa-land, 263 ; 
character of country and people, 
264; the name replaces that of 
Strath-Clyde, 266 ; harried by Ead- 
mund, 266 ; granted to Malcolm, 
King of Scots, 266 ; results of the 
grant, 266, 451 ; kings of, their op- 
position to the West Saxons, 266; 
see Oswine, Strath-Clyde. 

Cumbrians, their name transferred to 
the Britons of Strath-Clyde, 176; 
join the Northern league against 
yEthelstan, 243. 

Cuthbert, St., wanderings of his relics 
during the Danish invasions, 89, 
102. 

Cup-thegn, or butler, his office, 523 ; 
held by Alfred's grandfather, 173. 

Cwichelmslowe, see Cuckamsly. 

Cyneheard's Song Book, 326. 

Cynesige, chaplain to Eadward the 
Confessor, 526 ; Archbishop of 
York, 526 ; consecrates Harold's 
church at Waltham, 558. 

D 

" Dale " in place - names, mark of 

northern settlement, iii. 
Dalriada, the Scots of, subject to the 

Picts, 177 ; kings of, see Kenneth. 
Danegeld, the king's demesne exemjDt 



from, 387, note 3 ; the first national 
land-tax, 389 and note x ; its nomi- 
nal origin, 413 ; continued as a reg- 
ular land-tax, 414 ; its amount in 
Cnut's first year, 447 ; resistance to 
it at Worcester under Harthacnut, 
467 ; see Land-tax. 

Danelaw, the, 109-119 ; its relation to 
the North, 120 ; its results on Eng- 
lish history, 123 ; its weakness, 
124; rises against Alfred, 164 ; con- 
quered by Eadward and yEthelflasd, 
194-199 ; effect of its conquest on 
the character of the English king- 
ship, 202 ; its bond of allegiance to 
Eadward, 203 ; its alliance with the 
Ostmen, 205 ; its peaceful submis- 
sion to ^thelstan, 212; historical 
continuity of the districts in, 226; 
shires in, 227 ; emigration from, 
into Normandy, 237 ; rises against 
^thelstan, 243 ; against Eadmund, 
258 ; reduced to submission, 262 ; 
its struggles with Eadred, 277-281 ; 
its isolation under Eadgar, 311 ; 
fusion of races in, 312, 313 and 
notes ; absence of religious houses 
in, 328 ; joins Swein, 393. 

Danes, their early settlements on the 
isles of the Baltic, 51 ; effect of their 
attacks in arresting the consolida- 
tion of the English peoples under 
Ecgberht, 65 ; different uses of the 
name, 63, note i, 65, tiote ; their first 
appearance in Ireland, 73, note i, 
86 ; in Britain, 83, 346 ; their set- 
tlements in Sweden, Zeeland, and 
northern Jutland, 83 and tiote 3 ; 
character of their warfare, 84, 85 ; 
earliest authority for their settle- 
ments, 83, note 3 ; their struggle 
with the Norwegian settlers in Ire- 
land, 73, note I, 86; winter in East 
Anglia, 87 ; conquer Northumbria, 
88 ; destroy its abbeys, 88 ; set up 
Ecgberht as under-king of Deira, 90 
and note i ; winter at Nottingham, 
90 ; attacked by ^thelred and 
Burhred, 90; winter at York, 91 ; 
at Thetford, 91 ; conquer East An- 
glia, 91 ; put St. Eadmund to death, 
92 ; Mercia pays tribute to them, 
92 ; causes of their success, 92 ; at- 
tack Wessex, 93, 97 ; defeated at 
Ashdown, 99 ; march upon Hamp- 
shire, 99 ; their victory at Merton, 
99 ; bought off by iElfred, withdraw 
from Wessex, 100 and 7iote 2 ; win- 



INDEX. 



577 



ter at London, loo, note 2 ; return 
to Nortliumbria, loi ; conquer Mer- 
cia, loi ; winter at Repton, loi ; 
division of their host, loi ; set up 
Ceolwulf as King of Mercia, loi and 
note 2, ii6 and iiote i ; seize Exeter, 
103 ; driven from it by Alfred, 104; 
overrun the Gwent, 104; their set- 
tlements in Yorkshire, iii ; their 
trading-port at Caupmanna-thorpe, 
113 and note 2; their trade, 113, 
114; their organization, 114, 115, 
117; divide Mercia, 116; marks of 
their settlement in its local names, 
116 and note 2; their distribution 
in Mid-Britain, 115, 116; their set- 
tlements in Lincolnshire, 117; in 
Leicestershire, 118; in East Anglia, 
118; divide East Anglia, 118; effect 
of their settlement on England, 123 ; 
desertion of Englishmen to, 140, 
note 3 ; attack Frankland, 141 ; be- 
set Rochester, 142 ; repulsed by 
Alfred, 142 ; plunder London and 
winter at Fulham, 144 ; frith be- 
tween Alfred and Guthrum, 146 ; 
renewal of war with, 161, 164, 165 ; 
their alliance with the Welsh, 165 ; 
defeated by Eadward and ^thelred 
at Buttington, 165 ; driven back to 
Essex, 165 ; defeat an attack of the 
Londoners, i66 ; their retreat cut 
off by Alfred, 166; break-up of 
their host, 167 ; their raid over 
Mercia repulsed by Eadward at 
Tottenhale, 187; attack Towcester, 
195 ; Bedford, 196 ; defeated at 
Tempsford, Colchester, and Mal- 
don, 196 ; fusion with the English, 
312, 313 ; union under Gorm the 
Gld, 346 ; attack Courland, 347 ; 
mercenaries take service with 
iEthelred IL, 367 ; massacred by 
his order, 380; win Exeter, 380; 
attack East Anglia, 381 ; and plun- 
der Thetford, 381 ; their victory 
over Ulfcytel and the East Angles, 
381 ; held in check by yEthelred, 
384 ; winter in Wight, 384 ; march 
to Cuckamsly, 384; return to 
Wight, 384, 390 ; a truce bought 
with them, 385 ; defeat the East 
Anglian fyrd under Ulfcytel, 391 ; 
again bought off, 392 ; sack Canter- 
bury and seize Archbishop MXi- 
heah, 392 ; their withdrawal, 392 ; 
choose Cnut for king at Gainsbor- 
ough, 396; defeated at Brentford, 

37 



398 ; driven into Sheppey by Ead- 
mund, 400 ; set aside for PJnglish- 
men by Cnut, 407 ; impulse given 
by them to trade, 113, 114, 423; 
their trade in slaves, 427 ; their set- 
tlement at Chester, 425 ; Norwich, 
431 ; York, 1 14, 434 and note ; Lon- 
don, 445 ; in Frankland, 234, 235. 

Dane-work, the, in Sleswick, 60. 

David's, St., Cnut sends army to, 450. 

Deerhurst, meeting of Eadmund and 
Cnut near, 401. 

Defnssetas, English settlers in Devon, 
225. 

Deira, Danes settle in, 1 10 ; parted 
among them, I ID, 264 ; trade of the 
Danish settlers in, 114; its organi- 
zation under the Danes, 115 ; forms 
part of the Danelaw, 176; traces of 
its ancient divisions in the " shires " 
of modern Yorkshire, 221 ; its alli- 
ance with the Ostmen, 232 ; Eng- 
lish fugitives from, 264 ; united with 
Bernicia under Oswulf, 281 ; under 
Waltheof, 340 ; under Uhtred, 382 ; 
under Siward, 477 ; kings of, their 
extinction, 38, note i ; see North- 
umbria, Yorkshire. 

Demesnes, royal, their share in taxa- 
tion, 387, note 3. 

Dene, residence of ^Elfred, 152. 

Denewulf, Bishop of Winchester, 125. 

Denmark, kingdom of, its growth un- 
der Harald Blaatand, 277 ; physical 
character of the country, 346 ; king- 
dom of Gorm, 347 ; earliest ac- 
counts of, 347, note ; its capital at 
Lethra, 347 ; introduction of Chris- 
tianity, 350 ; becomes an under- 
kingdom of England, 407 ; ruled by 
Ulf, 407, 408 ; by Harthacnut, 448 ; 
its bishoprics filled by Englishmen, 
416 ; its frontier again extended to 
the Eider, 449 ; revolts against Cnut, 
450 ; claimed by Swein Estrithson, 
469 ; its throne disputed between 
Swein and Magnus of Norway, 475 ; 
kings of, see Cnut, Gorm," Harald, 
Harthacnut, Swein. 

Derby (Deoraby), Danish name of 
Northweorthig, 116, 198; one of 
the Five Boroughs, 198; taken by 
^thelflaed, 198. 

Derbyshire, 227. 

Derwent, river, limit of Strath-Clyde 
in Eadmund's day, 266. 

Dermot, King of Dublin, shelters 
Harold and Leofwine, 510. 



578 



INDEX. 



Devon or Dyvnaint, the country of 
the Defnsaetas, 224 ; formed into 
shire, 224, note i ; victory of its fyrd 
over the Wikings, 72 ; attacked by 
Hubba, 104, 106; Eadmund Iron- 
side raises troops in, 399 ; bishops 
of, see Leofric ; ealdormen of, 224, 
note I. 

Dish-thegn or steward, his functions, 

523- 

Domfront surrenders to William, 490. 

Dorchester, landing of Wikings at, 49. 

Dorchester, see of, 226 ; relations of 
the diocese to the Mercian kingdom 
and ealdormanry, 250, note i ; divid- 
ed between the ealdormanries of 
East Anglia and Essex, 250, note i ; 
bishops of, see Ulf, Wulfwig. 

Dore, submission of the Northumbri- 
ans to Ecgberht at, 90, note 4, 208 ; 
of the northern league to Eadward 
at, 208. 

Dorssetan give their name to Dorset, 
225. 

Dorset, progress of cultivation and in- 
dustry in, 5, 6 ; hundreds in, 5 ; set- 
tlement of the English in, 6 ; its in- 
dustrial life, 6, 7 ; appears as shire, 
224, note I ; victory of its fyrd over 
the Wikings, 72 ; invaded by Wik- 
ings from Ireland, 366 ; its feorm, 

. 387, note 3 ; seaports in, 428 ; eal- 
dormen of, 224, note I ; see ^thel- 
helm. 

Dover, its early importance as a sea- 
port, 74 and note 2, 428 ; the /Ethel- 
ing iElfred lands at, 464; Eustace 
of Boulogne at, 508; secured by 
William, 551. 

Drogo of Mantes marries Godgifu, 
daughter of ^thelred and Emma, 

474- 

" Dubh-Gaill," their first appearance m 
Ireland, 73, note i, 86 ; their struggle 
with the " Finn-Gaill," 86. 

Dublin taken by the Wikings, 71 and 
note 2 ; occupied by Olaf the Fair, 
86 ; becomes the centre of the Ost- 
men, 86 ; Olaf Sihtric's son and 
Guthferth take refuge at, 233 ; coins 
of Eadgar minted at, 310; Harold 
and Leofvvine take refuge at, 510; 
Harold gathers ships at, 513 ; kings 
of, see Dermot, Olaf, Sihtric. 

Duduc, chaplain to Cnut, 525 ; his 
foreign birth, 501, 525 ; Bishop of 
Wells, 526; at the Council of 
Rheims, 501. 



Dues, customary, 316, 317. 

Dumfriesshne, northern limit of the 
Norwegian settlements in Cumbria, 
265. 

Duncan, King of Scots, defeated in a 
raid upon Durham, 538 ; slain, 475, 
538 ; his sons take refuge with Si- 
ward, 538 ; his kinship with the 
Northumbrian earls, 539, note. 

Dunstan, St., authorities for his life, 
269, note 2 ; son of Heorstan, 270 ; 
description of, 270 ; date of his 
birth, 271, note i ; his youth at Glas- 
tonbury, 271, 272; goes to court, 

271 ; twice driven thence, 272 ; be- 
comes a monk, 272 ; his temper, 

272 ; life at Glastonbury, 272, 273 ; 
returns to court, 273 ; made Abbot 
of Glastonbury, 274 and note i ; his 
friendship with Eadred, 273, 274 ; 
with Eadred's mother and with 
^thelstan of East Anglia, 274, 293, 
«c/^3, 294; becomes Eadred's chief 
adviser, 275 ; accompanies him into 
Northumbria, 281 ; his office under 
Eadred, 282 ; in charge of the hoard, 
282, 287 ; his educational work, 282, 
283 ; buries Eadred, 287 ; at Ead- 
wig's coronation - feast, 296 ; out- 
lawed, 296 ; takes refuge at Ghent, 
296 and 7iote ; recalled by Eadgar, 
301 ; Bishop of Worcester and of 
London, 301 ; consecrated by Odo, 
301, note 3 ; Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 304 and note i; Eadgar's chief 
counsellor, 304 ; his policy, 304 ; 
his share in the government, 305 ; 
his civil administration, 305 ; intel- 
lectual revival under him, 326 ; his 
attitude towards the monastic revi- 
val, 330, 331 and note ; his policy of 
fusion between Church and State, 
333 ; crowns Eadgar, 336 ; supports 
Eadward, 338 ; his motives, 339 ; 
crowns .^thelred, 341 and note; 
withdraws from court, 341 ; his 
quarrel with ^thelred, 342, 343 ; 
his death, 343 ; his anniversary in- 
stituted by Cnut, 416 ; church in 
London dedicated to him, 446. 

Dunstan, son of ^thelnoth, revolts 

against Tostig, 542, note. 
Dunwich, 431. 
Durham, the Scots defeated at, 383, 

452, 538 ; bishops of, see Ealdhun ; 

its origin as a shire, 228, note I. 
Dyddenham, labor-roll of, 318. 
Dyvnaint, see Devon. 



INDEX. 



579 



E 

Eadberht, King of Northumbria, with- 
draws to a cloister, 39 ; extent of 
Northumbrian supremacy under, 
263. . 

Eadgar, son of Eadmund, 274 ; first 
king of all England, 46; withdraws 
from Eadwig's court, 298 and note 2 ; 
chosen king by the Mercians, 299 ; 
joined by the Northumbrians and 
East Angles, 300, note ; division of 
the kingdom, 301 ; his titles, 300, 
note, 301 and note 2 ; recalls Dun- 
stan, 301 ; succeeds Eadwigas king 
in Wessex, 302; his counsellors, 
303 and note i ; marries ^Ifthryth, 
303, note I, 306, 330; extension of 
the system of ealdormanries under 
him, 303 ; his alliance with the pri- 
mate and the Church, 304, 305 ; his 
work of Church restoration, 305 ; 
account of his reign in the monastic 
writers, 305, note ; in the Chronicle, 
306 ; his person and temper, 306, 
307; at Chester, 310, note 4, 425 ; 
ballads about him, 284, note 2 ; mar- 
ries ^thelflaed the White, 306; 
character of his reign, 307-309; 
William of Malmesbury's account 
of, 307, note 2, 308, note i ; peace of 
his reign, 308-310; the Ostmen be- 
come his aUies, 310; coins minted 
at Dublin, 310; his relations with 
^ Wales, 310 and note 3 ; with the 
Scots, 311 ; with the Danelaw, 311 ; 
cedes Edinburgh to the Scots, 311 ; 
possibly grants Lothian to them, 
452; Danes in his service, 314; 
love of foreigners, 314; English 
society under, 314 et seq. ; his alli- 
ance with Otto the Great, 314, note 
4; his zeal for monasticism, 330; 
extent of his direct government, 
334; materials and authorities for 
his reign, 334, note 2 ; the " hun- 
dred " first appears by name under 
him, 335, note i ; his new coinage, 
335, note 3 ; his crowning, 336 ; his 
laws, 314, 334; ravages Thanet, 
335 ; his royal progresses, 336 ; his 
fleet, 335 ; his death, 336 ; his chil- 
dren, 337 ; names his successor, 338 ; 
trade of London under him, 445 5 his 
patronage of the Flemings, 449 ; his 
laws renewed by Cnut, 408. 
Eadgar, son of the setheling, Eadward, 
536; chossn king, 552; submits to 



William, 552 ; takes refuge in Scot- 
land, 554 ; joins the Northumbrian 
revolt, 554; returns to Scotland, 

556- 

Eadgifu, third wife of Eadward the 
Elder, and mother of Eadmund and 
Eadred, 257 and note 2 ; her alliance 
with Dunstan, 274, 293, note 2, 294 ; 
with /Ethelstan of East Anglia, 293, 
note 2 ; prevents ^Ethelwold from 
going over sea, 283, note 2 ; driven 
from court, 294 and note 3 ; returns, 
302 and tiote 2. 

Eadgifu, daughter of Eadward the 
Elder, married to Charles the Sim- 
ple, 239 ; takes refuge in England, 
254 ; recalled by Lewis, 255. 

Eadgyth, daughter of Eadward the 
Efder, marries Otto the German, 

239. 

Eadgyth, daughter of Godwme, mar- 
ries Eadward the Confessor, 482 ; 
sent to a monastery, 511 ; brought 
back, 516; surrenders Winchester 
to William, 552. 

Eadhild, daughter of Eadward the 
Elder, marries Hugh the Great, 
240. 

Eadmund, St., King of East Anglia, 
martyred by the Danes, 92 ; his life 
written by Abbo of Fleury, 326 ; ab- 
bey built over his relics, 92; re- 
founded by Cnut, 415. 

Eadmund, son of Eadward the Elder, 
at Brunanburh, 243 ; marries .^th- 
elflaed, 250 ; succeeds ^thelstan as 
king, 257 ; his policy, 258 ; his royal 
style, 258, note; his struggle with 
the Danelaw, 258, 259 ; drives out 
Olaf and Ragnald, 262 and note i ; 
harries Cumberland, 266 ; grants it 
to Malcolm, 266 ; his hunting ad- 
venture at Cheddar, 273 ; receives 
ambassadors from Otto, 273 and 
7tote I ; his alliance with Lewis, 
268; his death, 269; buried at 
Glastonbury, 287 ; his children, 274; 
his reform of the law of feud, 26, 
267. 

Eadmund, son of ^thelred IL, called 
Ironside, 400 ; sent to England with 
pledges from yEthelred, 396 ; dis- 
sensions with Eadric, 397 ; his mar- 
riage, 397 ; opposes Cnut, 398 ; falls 
back on Northumbria, 398 ; joins 
^thelred in London, 398 ; crowned 
king there, 399; raises forces in 
Somerset and Devon, 399 ; meets 



58o 



INDEX. 



Cnut in Wiltshire, 399 ; relieves 
London, 399 ; defeats the Danes at 
Brentford, 399 ; returns to the west, 
399 ; drives the Danes into Shep- 
jiey, 400 ; joined by Eadric and the 
Mercians, 400 ; by Ulfcytel and the 
East Anglians, 400 ; defeated at As- 
sandun, 400 ; treaty of Olney, 401 ; 
his death and burial, 401 ; Cnut's 
pilgrimage to his tomb, 416 ; his 
sons, 454 ; they fly to Hungary, 403, 

536. 

Eadmund, Ealdorman, 298, note 2,303, 
note I. 

Eadred, son of Eadward the Elder and 
Eadgifu, 257, note 2 ; his friendship 
with Dunstan, 273, 274 ; succeeds 
Eadmund, 274 ; Dunstan his chief 
adviser, 275 ; his crowning at King- 
ston, 275, 276 ; his proclamation, 
275 and note 2 ; his royal style, 276 
and note 2, 286 ; the Scots renew 
their alliance with, 277; oath of al- 
legiance from Northumbria, 277 ; 
authority for his reign, 277, note 4 ; 
his ill - health, 278, 287 ; subdues 
Northumbria, 279 ; final submission 
of the Danelaw to, 280 ; reduces 
Northumbria to an earldom, 280 ; 
his Witenagemots, 286; peace of his 
last years, 286 ; meets the North- 
umbrian chiefs at Abingdon, 286, 
7tote I ; his imperial claims, 276, 
286 ; sends envoys to Otto, 286, 
note 2 ; falls sick at Fronie, 287 ; 
his death and burial, 287. 

Eadric and Hlothere, laws of, 20, notes 
I and 3. 

Eadric succeeds Wulfgeat as high 
reeve, 383 ; his vigorous policy, 
384 ; charges against him, 383 ; his 
surname of " Streona," 384, note i ; 
made Ealdorman of Mercia, 385 ; 
marries a daughter of ^thelred II., 
385 ; his policy, 383 ; his reorgan- 
ization of the army and the fleet, 
386; hinders an engagement with 
Thurkill, 391 ; falls back into Mer- 
cia, 392 ; his ealdormanry called 
" Myrcenarice," 392 ; ravages the 
Welsh coast, 392 ; slays two chief 
thegns of the Seven Boroughs, 397 ; 
heads the host against Cnut, 397 ; 
his quarrel with Eadmund, 397 ; 
joins Cnut, 398 ; accompanies him 
to the siege of London, 399 ; rejoins 
Eadmund, 400 ; charged with deser- 
tion at Assandun, 401 ; mediates 



between Eadmund and Cnut, 401 ; 
slain, 403. 

Eadsige made Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 525 ; his death, 505. 

Eadward the Elder, son of Alfred, 
164; his education, 150, note 4, 181, 
182, note I ; attacks the Wikings' 
camp in Essex, 165 ; defeats them 
at Buttington, 165 ; his temper, 182 ; 
his accession, 182 ; authorities for 
his reign, 190, note, 183, note 3 ; his 
victory over ^Ethelwald, 183 ; re- 
news the Frith of Wedmore, 183 ; 
union of Wessex and Mercia under 
him, 184 ; his change in the royal 
style, 184 and note i ; repulses the 
Danes at Tottenhale, 187; harries 
the Danelaw, 187 ; musters a fleet 
in the Channel, 187 ; takes the lower 
valley of the Thames from Mercia 
and annexes it to Wessex, 188; 
founds Hertford, 189 ; annexes 
southern Essex, 189 ; rebuilds Col- 
chester, 197 ; the Danes of East 
Anglia, Essex, and Cambridge, sub- 
mit to him, 197 ; takes Bucking- 
ham, 195 ; Bedford, Towcester, and 
Northampton, 195 ; Huntingdon, 
196; Stamford, 197; Nottingham 
and Lincoln, 199 ; fortifies Witham, 
189; Buckingham, 194; Bedford, 
Towcester, Maldon, and Wigmore, 
195 ; Huntingdon and Colchester, 
196; Stamford, 197; Nottingham, 
199 ; Thelwell, Manchester, and 
Bakewell, 205, 206 ; takes Mercia 
into his own hands, 200; the North 
Welsh brought under his direct gov- 
ernment, 200 and note i ; receives 
oaths of allegiance from English 
and Danes, 202, 203 ; builds a bridge 
at Nottingham, 206, 421 ; league of 
the North against, 207 ; its submis- 
sion, 208 and note ; his death, 209 ; 
marriages of his daughters, 239, 240 ; 
children of his three marriages, 257, 
7iote 2 ; liis law against witchcraft, 

ID. 

Eadward the Martyr, son of Eadgar 
and ^^thelflaed, 306 ; named by 
Eadgar as his successor, 338 ; his 
claim to the crown supported by 
^Ifhere, 338 ; by Dunstan and Os- 
wald, 338 ; his crowning, 338 ; op- 
position to, 339 ; slain, 340 ; buried 
at Wareham, 341 ; counted a mar- 
tyr, 341 ; buried at Shaftesbury, 342 ; 
succession of the ealdormen under 



INDEX. 



581 



him, 357, note i ; his anniversary in- 
stituted by Cnut, 416. 

Eadward the Confessor, son of^thel- 
red and Emma, his Norman educa- 
tion, 395 ; makes a descent at South- 
ampton, 462 ; summoned by Hartha- 
cnut and recognized as heir to the 
throne, 467 ; his title of Confessor, 
467 ; his personal appearance, 467 ; 
his Norman sympathies, 468; re- 
turns to Normandy, 468; crowned 
at Winchester, 468 ; chosen king by 
the English people, 470; his alleged 
promise to Swein Estrithson, 470; 
unwillingness to accept the crown, 
473 ; his Norman followers, 473 ; 
his political position, 476 ; growth 
of administration under him, 475, 
note; his use of a seal, 476, «i?/^; his 
position in Wessex, 480; makes his 
home at Westminster, 480 ; redis- 
tribution of the earldoms under him, 
481 ; marries Eadgyth, 482 ; influ- 
ence of his Norman counsellors, 482 ; 
gathers a fleet at Sandwich to sup- 
port the emperor against Flanders, 
503 ; opposes ^Ifric's election to 
Canterbury and appoints Robert of 
Jumieges, 506 ; orders Godwine to 
punish the citizens of Dover, 508 ; 
refuses to give up Eustace, 509 ; his 
measures after Godwine's flight, 51 1 ; 
visited by William, 512 ; his alleged 
promises of the crown to William, 
473, 512 and note ; gathers a fleet 
and army to meet Godwine, 514; 
his Norman counsellors outlawed, 
516; his court after Godwine's re- 
turn, 517; his reorganization of the 
chancery, 527; his chaplains, 526; 
his relations with Godwine's sons, 
534 ; calls home the aetheling Ead- 
ward, 536 ; sends Siward to make 
war on Macbeth, 539 ; sends Gisa 
of Wells to Rome for consecration, 
558 ; his death, 547, 559. 

Eadward, son of Eadmund Ironside, 
finds shelter in Hungary, 536 ; called 
home by the Confessor, 536; his 
death, 545. 

Eadwine, Earl of Mercia, 547 ; submits 
to William, 553 ; revolts against 
William, 556 ; slain, 556. 

Eadwig, son of Eadmund, 274 ; suc- 
ceeds Eadred as king, 293 and note 
I ; changes his counsellors, 294 and 
note 4; influenced by ^thelgifu 
against Dunstan, 294; date of his 



coronation, 295, note i ; the corona- 
tion feast, 295 ; sentences Dunstan 
to outlawry, 296 ; revives the Mer- 
cian ealdormanry in favor of ^If- 
here, 297; marries ^Ifgifu, 298; 
his marriage denounced, 299 ; his 
kindred withdraw from court, 298 
and note 2 ; separated from his wife 
by sentence of Archbishop Odo, 
299 ; supported by /Ethelwold and 
the West-Saxon clergy, 299, note 2 ; 
his benefactions to Abingdon, 299, 
note 2 ; revolt against him, 299 ; its 
date, 299, note 2 ; misrepresentations 
of its origin, 299, note 2 ; authorities 
for its history, 300, note ; division of 
the realm between him and Eadgar, 
301 and note I ; submits to the arch- 
bishop's sentence, 302 ; his death, 
302. 

Eadwulf of Bamborough, ruler of Ber- 
nicia, his alliance with Alfred, 177 
and note I. 

Eadwulf, brother of Uhtred,made Earl 
of Northumbria, 409 ; slain in battle 
with the Scots at Carham, 452. 

Eadwulf, son of Uhtred, succeeds 
Ealdred as Earl of Bernicia, 477 
and note 2 ; slain by Siward, 477. 

Eadhelm, St., Bishop of Sherborne, his 
foundations in Dorset, 6; his diocese 
called " Selwoodshire," 222, note i. 

Ealdhun, Bishop of Durham, his 
daughter marries Earl Uhtred, 477, 
note 2. 

Ealdormanries, the great, originated 
by Alfred, 247 ; danger of the 
measure, 247 ; suppressed by Ead- 
ward, 247 ; revived by ^Ethelstan 
and his successors, 248 ; limitations 
of the system, 248 ; extended to Wes- 
sex, 302 ; policy of ^thelred and 
Cnut towards them, 411; changed 
into earldoms, 411; see Anglia 
(East), Essex, Mercia, Northumbria, 
Wessex. 

Ealdormen become delegates of the 
king, 33 ; their distribution in Mer- 
cia, 44, 229 ; in Wessex, 47, 67, 228 ; 
title of ealdorman given to the head 
of a frith-gild, 442. 

Ealdormen, the great, how appointed, 
248 ; their royal blood, 248 ; danger 
of the arrangement, 249 ; growth of 
their power, 292 ; checks upon it, 
293 ; their claims upon Eadgar, 
302 ; their order in the charters, 
303, note I ; their power over the 



582 



INDEX. 



crown, 334, 342 ; their succession 
under Eadward the Martyr, 357, 
note I ; jEthelred's policy towards, 
358 ; their number and order after 
iEthelwine's death, 377, 378, 383 ; 
Cnut's treatment of, 403 ; changed 
into earls, 411. 

Ealdred, Bishop of Worcester, visits 
the court of Bruges, 505 ; brings 
Swein home, 505 ; fails to overtake 
Harold in his flight, 511; sent to 
call home the aetheling Eadward, 
536 ; as Archbishop of York, re- 
ceives the Pope's legates, 558; con- 
secrates Wulfstan, 559; crowns 
Harold, 559 ; crowns William, 552. 

Ealdred of Bernicia, son of Eadwulf, 
his friendship with Eadward the 
Elder, 177, note i ; joins the North- 
ern league against him, 208 ; sub- 
mits to him, 208, note i ; to ^^thel- 
Stan, 211 ; stirs up a rising of the 
Danelaw, 242. 

Ealdred, son of Uhtred, becomes Earl 
of Northumbria, 478, note ; his feud 
with Carl, 478, note ; murdered, 478, 
note ; his daughter marries Siward, 
476, 478, note ; his death avenged 
by Waltheof, 478, note. 

Ealdred, a descendant of Earl Uhtred, 
revolts against Tostig, 541, note 2. 

Ealhstan, Bishop of Sherborne, 70 ; 
his victory over the Wikings, 72 ; 
supports ^thelbald against ^thel- 
wulf, 80. 

Eamot, submission of the Scots, 
Danes, and Welsh at, 211. 

Eardulf, Bishop of Lindisfarne, driven 
out by Halfdene, 102. 

Eardwulf, King of Northumbria, suc- 
ceeds iEthelred, 42 ; his death, 42. 

Earldoms, ealdormanries changed 
into, 411 ; their distribution under 
Harthacnut, 479 ; under Eadward 
and Godwine, 481 ; on Godwine's 
fall, 511; on his return, 517, 518; 
under Harold, 537 ; see Anglia 
( East ), Hereford, Hwiccas, Kent, 
Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex. 

Earls suljstituted for ealdormen by 
Cnut, 411. 

Earth-goddess, prayer to the, 11. 

"Eastern Kingdom," its extent and 
relation to Wessex, 66 ; see Kent. 

Ebbe, St., church at Oxford dedicated 
to, 421 ; date of her martyrdom, 
421, note I. 

Ecgberht, England under, 1-47 ; not a 



King of England, 46 ; relation of 
the other kings to, 47 ; deposes and 
restores Wiglaf of Mercia^ 47 ; ris- 
ing of the West Welsh against, 64 ; 
defeats them at Hengestdun, 64 ; his 
efforts after a national sovereignty, 
65 ; organization of Wessex under, 
46, 65-67 ; his claim to be heredi- 
tary King of Kent, 66 ; sets his 
eldest son over Kent, 66 and note ; 
alliance witli the Church, 69, 70 ; 
owned as over-lord by the Northum- 
brians at Dore, 90, note 4 ; his con- 
quest of London, 143 ; the complete 
shire-organization of Wessex prob- 
ably dates from his day, 224. 

Ecgberht, King of Deira under the 
Danes, 90 and note i, no; driven 
out, no. 

Ecgberht, Archbishop of York, his 
regulations concerning slavery, 320. 

Ecgberht's stone, ^^Ifred musters the 
West- Saxon host at, 106. 

Ecwils, King of Northumbria, 188. 

Eddisbury, ^thelflsed at, 193. 

Edinburgh becomes Scottish, 311,452. 

Edington, battle of, 106. 

Egil Skallogrimson, Saga of, 214; its 
account of the battle of Brunanburh, 
243, note 3. 

Eider, river, frontier of Denmark and 
Germany, 449. 

Eildon Hills, ^thelwold Moll's vic- 
tory at, 39. 

Elfege, Bishop of Winchester, kins- 
man of Dunstan, 270, note i. 

Elmham, bishops of, see ^ihelmaer, 
Stigand. 

Ely sacked by Ivar and Hubba, 91 ; 
Cnut's gifts to, 416; tradition of his 
visit to, 417; the aetheling Alfred 
dies at, 464 ; surrenders to William, 

556. 
Emma, daughter of Richard the Fear- 
less, her marriage with ^thehed 
II-. 370. 377; its effects, 376, 377; 
takes refuge in Normandy, 395 ; 
left there on .(Ethelred's return, 
396 ; marries Cnut, 404 ; supports 
Harthacnut's claim to England, 
461 ; remains at Winchester with 
the huscarls, 462, 463 ; robbed of 
Cnut's treasure by Harald, 463 ; 
driven from the realm, 465 ; her 
friendship with Stigand, 557; her 
property seized, 557 ; takes refuge 
in Flanders, 466 ; supports Hartha- 
cnut, 466. 



INDEX. 



583 



" Emperor," style of .-Ethelstan, 232 ; 

of Eached, 276, note 2, 287. 
Emperors, see Charles, Conrad, Henry, 

Lewis, Otto. 
Empire, the, its revival under Otto, 
494 ; limits of its supremacy, 494 ; 
its relations with the church, 496. 
Engle, Middle, their land about Lei- 
cester, one of the five regions of the 
Mercian kingdom, 226 ; represented 
by Leicestershire, 226, 227 ; later 
earldom, 479. 
Engle, North, represented by Notting- 
hamshire, 227. 
Engle, South, their land about Dor- 
chester, one of the five regions of 
the Mercian kingdom, 226 ; repre- 
sented by Northamptonshire, 227. 
Engle land, the original, settled by 
Scandinavian peoples, 59 and note, 
172 ; known in the ninth century as 
South Jutland, 60. 
Ennerdale, 265. 

Eric Bloody-axe, son and successor of 
Harold Fairhair, 251; his charac- 
ter, 251 ; his marriage with Gunhild, 
251, 252 ; his early adventures, 251 ; 
chosen by Harald as his successor, 
252 ; slays his brothers Rognwald 
and Biorn, 252 ; baptized, and set 
over Northumbria by iEthelstan, 
252; his Wiking life, 253 ; threat- 
ened with deposition by Eadmund, 
quits Northumbria, 258. 
Eric Hiring, son of Harald Blaatand, 
received by the Northumbrians as 
their king, 278 and note i ; driven 
out, 279; returns, 280; driven out 
again, 280 ; his death, 280, 7iote 2 ; 
account of him in the Saga of Hakon 
the Good, 280, note 4. 
Eric, King of Sweden, drives Swein 
from Denmark, 353, 354 ; his death, 
368. 
Eric, son of Jarl Hakon, joins Swein 
and the Swedes in attacking Olaf 
Tryggvason, 369; made Earl of 
Northumbria by Cnut, 400, 403 ; 
brother-in-law of Cnut, 407; loan- 
ished, 407. 
Erkenwald, St., Bishop of London, 
437 and note 2 ; rise of parishes in 
London during his episcopate, 437 
and note 3 ; founds the monastery 
at Barking, 438, note i ; dies there, 
437; struggle for the possession of 
his remains, 437. 
Essex forms part of the " Eastern 



Kingdom," 66; its extent, 143; re- 
united to East Anglia under Guth- 
rum, 118, 143, 144; its division at 
the frith between Alfred and Guth- 
rum, 144, 146; its western half 
formed into a separate district round 
London, 146 ; its southern part an- 
nexed by Eadward the Elder, 189; 
the Danes of, submit to Eadward, 
197 ; becomes a shire of the West- 
Saxon realm, 225 ; joined with Mid- 
dlesex, etc., under Leofwine, 544 ; 
ealdormanry of, its creation, 250 ; 
its extent, 249 and note 3 ; ealdor- 
men ot, 250 ; their alliance with 
those of East Anglia, 250 ; see M\{- 
gar, Byrhtnoth, Leofsige. 

Estrith, sister of Cnut, her marriage 
with Ulf, 408 ; its date, 408, note 2. 

Ethandun, see Edington. 

Eu, counts of, their descent from Gun- 
nor, 374. 

Eugenius, under -king of the North 
Welsh, 215, note i. 

Eustace, Count of Boulogne, marries 
Godgifu, daughter of ^thelred II., 
500 ; excommunicated by the Coun- 
cil of Rheims, 502 ; visits Eadward, 
507 ; quarrel of his followers with 
the townsfolk of Dover, 507, 508 ; 
his surrender demanded by God- 
wine, 508 ; refused, 509 ; called by 
the Kentishmen to aid them against 
Odo of Bayeux, 553. 

Evesham, council of, 385, note 4. 

Exchequer, origin of, 475, note ; see 
Hoard. 

Exeter seized by the Danes, 103 ; re- 
gained by iElfred, 104 ; defended 
by him against the Wikings, 165 ; 
iEthelstan expels the Britons from, 
211 ; Witenagemots at, 216 and note 
I, 218 ; mint at, 219 ; Emma's dowry 
town, 380 ; Swein lands at, 380 ; 
surrendered to Swein, 380 ; its situ- 
ation, 427; submits to William, 
553 ; besieged by the English, 554; 
relieved by William P'itz - Osbern, 
554. p 

Falaise, birth of William the Con- 
queror at, 457 ; William escapes 
thither from the revolt of the Coten- 
tin, 487. 

Fearndun, death of Eadward the Elder 
at, 209. 

Feorm-fultum, 387, note 3. 

Feud, right of, the original ground- 



584 



INDEX. 



work of national justice, 21 ; its 
nature and limits, 21-26 ; its regula- 
tion under Eadmund, 26, 267. 
Feudalism, its growth in England, 289, 

290,345- 

Feversham, Witenagemot at, 216 and 
note 2. 

Finance, yEthelred's system of, 387, 
note 3, 413. 

"Finn-Gaill," their struggle with the 
"DublvGaill," 73, note i, 86. 

Fisheries in the Severn, 422 ; in the 
Wye, 422, note 2 ; on the south 
coast, 427-429 ; in the German Sea, 
430 ; their importance, 430. 

Fitz-Osbern, house of, 374. 

Five Boroughs, their organization, 
117; first occurrence of the name, 
116, note 4; conquered by ^thel- 
flsed and Eadward, 197-199 ; rise 
against Eadmund, 259 ; submit to 
Swein, 393. 

Flanders, its rise and growth, 492 ; 
character of its people, 492 ; of its 
counts, 492 ; their encouragement 
of its freedom and trade, 493 ; rise 
of its towns, 493 ; its relations with 
France and with the Empire, 494 ; 
with Normandy, 497 ; with England, 
175, 499; revolts against the em- 
peror, 497 ; refuge of Dunstan, 296 
and «^/^ 3 ; of Emma, 466; of God- 
wine and his sons, 510; of Swein, 
483, 504 ; of Tostig, 547 ; called 
" Baldwin's land," 466, 499 ; counts 

■ of, see Arnulf, Baldwin, Lyderic. 

Fleet created by Alfred, 132 and note 
2 ; its importance at the siege of 
Exeter, 132 ; repulses the Danes, 
142 ; its organization under Eadgar, 
335 ; its decay under ^thelred, 359, 
367, 386 ; he engages Danes to man 
it, 367 ; reorganized by ^thelred 
and Eadric, 386. 

Fleury, English clerks sent to learn 
the Benedictine rule at, 329 and 
note 2. 
Florence of Worcester, his translation 
of the Chronicle, 327, note; charac- 
ter and composition of his work, 
365, note 3, 382, 7tote i. 
Folks, the early, their consolidation 
into larger kingdoms, 137 ; its re- 
sults, 33-38. 
" Folk-frith," 22. 

Folk-moot, the, its judicial character 

and process, 23, 24 ; difficulty of 

. enforcing its dooms, 28, 134 and 



7tote 3 ; dies down into the shire- 
moot, 35. 

" Folk's justice," 27 ; passes into the 
"king's justice," 29. 

" Ford " in place-names, 265, note 2. 

" Foss " in place-names, 265, Jiote 2. 

Fosse Way, 193. 

" Fourfold Realm," the, 275, 7tote 2, 
276 and note 2. 

Fraena, Jarl, joins Guthrum, 93 ; slain 
at Ashdown, 93, 7iote. 

France, its relations with Normandy 
and Anjou, 489 ; kings of, see Henry; 
see also Frankland (West). 

Frankland, East, see Germany. 

Frankland, West, the Wikings in, 73, 
74, 141, 163 ; settlement of Hrolf in, 
234 ; kings of, see Carloman, Charles, 
Lewis, Odo, Rudolf. 

Frank-pledge, 220. 

Friesland or Frisia conquered by God- 
frid of Westfold, 61 ; settlement of 
the Wikings in, 73 ; Alfred's fleet 
manned by pirates from, 132 ; in- 
vaded by Gorm, 348 ; merchants 
from, 438. 

Frideswide or Fritheswith, St., foun- 
dation at Oxford, 419. 

"Frith," 21. 

Frith of Wedmore, 107 ; between Al- 
fred and Guthrum, 120 ; its true 
date, 144 ; its provisions, 144, 145. 

Frith-gilds, their origin, 219, 220 ; their 
constitution and objects, 220 ; an 
element of municipal life in towns, 
221 ; frith-gild of London, 220, 442 ; 
its possible connection with the 
cnichten-gild and merchant -gild, 

443- 

Frome, Witenagemot at, 215, note i, 
242, note 3 ; Eadred dies at, 287. 

Fulford, battle of, priests slain at, 543, 
note. 

Fulham, Danes winter at, 144. 

" Fykli " correspond to "folks," 55. 

Fyrd, the, corresponds with the Ka- 
rolingian "land-wehr," 127; its 
composition and its defects, 127- 
129; fines for neglect of, 128; re- 
organized by Alfred, 130 ; by 
/Ethelred IL and Eadric, 386. 



Gainas [^thelred], Ealdorman of the, 
his daughter marries Alfred, 96. 

Gainsborough, northern England sub- 
mits to Swein at, 393 ; Swein dies 
at, 395 ; Cnut chosen king by the 



INDEX. 



585 



Danes at, 396; ^thelred marches 
upon, 396. 

Galmanho, suburb of York, 540; Si- 
ward buried there, 540. 

Game], son of Orni, 541, note 2. 

Gamel-bearn, a Northumbrian, revolts 
against Tostig, 541, note 2. 

" Garth " in place-uames, 265, note 2. 

Gatesgarth, 265. 

Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, his 
conquest of Poitou and Maine, 4S9 ; 
his war with King Henry, 490; with 
"William of Normandy, 490. 

Germany, its friendly intercourse with 
England, 475 ; kings of, see Arnulf, 
Conrad, Henry, Lewis, Otto. 

Ghent, its origin, 493 ; Dunstan takes 
refuge at, 296. 

Gild, see Cnichten -gild. Frith -gild. 
Merchant-gild. 

" Gill " in place-names, 265, note 2. 

Gisa, chaplain to Eadward the Con- 
fessor, 527 ; a Lotharingian, 527 ; 
made Bishop of Wells, 527 ; conse- 
crated at Rome, 558. 

Glamorgan, descent of the Northmen 
on, 63, 7iote 4. 

Glastonbury, birthplace of Dunstan, 
270; its school and church, 271; 
^thelstan's pilgrimage to, 271, 7iote 
2 ; tomb of St. Patrick at, 271, note 
2; Irish pilgrims at, 271, tiote 2; 
Dunstan made abbot of, 274; its 
school under him, 282 ; memorials 
of his scholastic work at, 2S2 and 
note ^-f its influence on English lit- 
erature, 284, 285 ; wide range from 
which its scholars were drawn, 282, 
note 4 ; decline of monastic rule at, 
329 and note 2 ; clerks from, accom- 
pany iEthelwold to Abingdon, 282, 
7iote 4, 329, note 2 ; Eadmund, Ead- 
red, and Eadmund Ironside buried 
at, 287, 401 ; Cnut's pilgrimage to, 
415. 

Gleemen, preservers of the old nation- 
al poetry, 324 ; their popularity, 324 ; 
hostility of the Church to them, 325. 

Glonieorn, son of Heardolf, 542, tiote. 

Gloucester (Glevum), its importance, 
422 ; Alfred's mint at, 422 ; Guth- 
rum winters at, 104 ; ^thelstan dies 
at, 257 ; Eustace of Boulogne visits, 
507 ; monastery at, 422 ; Dudoc, ab- 
bot of, 525. 

Gloucestershire, part of the land of 
the Hwiccas, 226 ; detached from 
Mercia and joined with Hereford, 



etc., under Swein,48i ; with Worces- 
ter under Odda, 517. 

Godfrey, Count of Lorraine, revolts 
against the emperor, 497 ; excom- 
municated by the pope, 501 ; sub- 
mits, 501. 

Godfrid, or Gudrbd, King of West- 
fold and South Jutland, attacks Sles- 
wick, 60; the "Dane -work," 60; 
conquers Frisia, 60 ; slain, 61 ; di- 
vision of his kingdoms, 61. 

Godgifu, daughter of ^^Lthelred and 
Emma, 474 ; marries Eustace of 
Boulogne, 500. 

Godmanchester (Durolipons), 197. 

Godmann, chaplain to Eadward the 
Confessor, 526. 

Godwine, traditions of his origin, 410 ; 
marries Gytha, 410 ; left as ruler of 
England in Cnut's absence, 410 ; 
made Earl of Wessex, 410 ; his im- 
portance and wealth, 410 ; becomes 
" Secundarius Regis," 412; his po- 
sition at Cnut's death, 460 ; supports 
the claims of Harthacnut, 461 ; op- 
posed by Leofric of Mercia, 462 ; 
charged with the death of the seth- 
eling jElfred, 464, 466 ; clears him- 
self by oath, 466 ; forsakes Hartha- 
cnut and joins in the election of 
Harald, 465 ; his influence, 469, 
474 ; his good government, 475 ; 
his share in Cnut's administrative 
system, 475, note ; his power over 
the crown, 4S0 ; promotion of his 
house, 481 ; opposed by Eadward's 
Norman counsellors, 482 ; opposi- 
tion of the Witan, 483 ; his alliance 
with Baldwin of Flanders, 499, 503 ; 
his attitude towards the religious 
revival, 495 ; his relations with Sti- 
gand, 558; supports the claim of 
^Ifric to the see of Canterbury, 
505 ; his enmity with Robert of Ju- 
mieges, 482, 505, 507 ; refuses to 
avenge Count Eustace on the citi- 
zens of Dover, 508 ; gathers forces 
near Gloucester, 509; encamps at 
Southwark, 510; summoned before 
the Witan, 510; outlawed, 510; 
flies to Flanders, 510; his alliance 
with the Ostmen, 510; regrets at 
his departure, 51 1; equips a fleet 
in the Yser, 513; sympathy with, 
513 and note 2; embassies from 
France and Flanders in his behalf, 
514; failure of his first attempt at 
return, 514; meets Harold off 



586 



INDEX. 



Wight, 514; his restoration, 515; 
change in his position, 516; his re- 
lations with Eadward after his re- 
turn, 517 ; with the earls, 517 ; with 
the Church, 518; Norman feeh'ng 
against him, 519 ; his character and 
work, 520-522 ; his death, 534 ; po- 
sition of his house after his death, 
534, 546 and note i. 

Gokstad, Wiking's ship found at, 56, 
note 3. 

Gorm the Old, Denmarli united under, 
346 ; at Haslo, 346, note i ; conquers 
Jutland, 347 ; invades Friesland, 
348 ; defeated by Henry the Fowler, 
348 ; his death, 348 and note I ; ex- 
tinction of his race, 459. 

Gorm, see Guthrum. 

Gospatric joins the revolt of North- 
umbria against Tostig, 542, note. 

Greatley (Greatanlea), Witenagemot 
at, 216 and note 2. 

Grimbald of St. Omer, Abbot of Win- 
chester, 151. 

Grimbald of Plessis, 487. 

Grimsby, its commercial importance, 
117 and 7iote 2. 

" Grith," the king's, 32. 

Gruffydd, son of Llewelyn, growth of 
his power in Wales, 475 ; his alli- 
ance with yElfgar, 544. 

Guildford, the aetheling Alfred seized 
at, 464. 

Gunhild, wife of Eric Bloody - axe, 
251. 

Gunhild, daughter of Burislaf, King 
of the Wends, wife of Swein, 352, 
note I. 

Gunhild, daughter of Cnut and Emma, 
betrothed to Henry of Germany, 
449 ; her marriage, 475 ; her only 
child becomes a nun, 459. 

Gunnor, wife of Richard the Fearless, 
374- 

Guthferth, Sihtric's son, driven out of 
Deira, 210, note i. 

Guthferth, brother of Sihtric, takes 
refuge in Dublin, 233. 

Guthrum, or Gorm, leader of the 
Danes, attacks Wessex, 93 ; de- 
feated at Ashdown, 98; marches to 
Cambridge, 102 ; his second attack 
on Wessex, 103 ; makes a treaty 
with yElfred at Wareham, 103 ; 
winters at Gloucester, 104 ; joined 
by Hubba, 104 ; marches to Chip- 
penham, 104 ; defeated at Edington, 
106 ; treaty of Wedm.ore, 107 ; and 



divides East Anglia, 118; becomes 
master of London, 118; character 
and extent of his realm, 119, 120 ; 
baptized at Aire, 120; his chrism- 
loosing, 120 and note i ; called ^th- 
elstan in baptism, 121 ; story of his 
relations with Harald Fairhair, 121- 
123 ; his defeat at Saucourt, 141 ; 
his submission to Alfred, 143 ; his 
[second] peace with Alfred, 120, 
144, 145, note I ; his friendship with 
Hrolf, 233; his death, 161. 

Guy of Burgundy, grandson of Richard 
the Good, 487 ; his possessions in 
Normandy, 487; revolts against 
William, 487. 

Guy, Count of Ponthieu, captured by 
the Normans at Mortemer, 533. 

Gwent, the, the earliest Wessex, 222 ; 
its military advantages, 44; Danes 
in, 100, 104. 

Gyrth, son of Godvvine, flies with him 
to Flanders, 510 ; made Earl of East 
Anglia, 544; accompanies Tostig 
to Rome, 558; slain by William at 
Senlac, 551. 

Gyrwas, country of, included in the 
East -Anglian ealdormanry, 250; 
joined with Nottingham and Lei- 
cester under Beorn, 482. 

Gyrwas, North, their land represented 
by Huntingdonshire, 227. 

Gyrwas, South, their land represented 
by Cambridgeshire, 227. 

Gytha, sister of Ulf, marries Godvvine, 
410. 

Gytha of Hordaland, 162. 

H 

Hafursfiord, battle of, 162 and tiote 2 ; 
its date, 163, note 3. 

Hakon, son of Harald Fairhair, drives 
Eric Bloody - axe from Norway, 
252. 

Hakon, Jarl, ruler of Norway under 
Harald Blaatand, 349 ; Norway re- 
volts against him, 365; defeats the 
Jomsborgers, 390. 

Hakon, nephew of Cnut, sent to rule 
in Norway, 407 ; driven out, 448 ; 
restored by Cnut, 450. 

Halfdene ravages Bernicia, 88, note 2, 
loi ; expels Bishop Eardulf from 
Lindisfarne, 102 ; burns Colding- 
ham, 101 ; destroys Carlisle, 102 ; 
ravages Cumbria and Strathclyde, 
102 and note 2, no; divides Deira, 
III. 



INDEX. 



587 



Halfdene, King of Northumbria, his 
defeat and death, 188. 

Halgoland, 172; called a"scyr"by 
Alfred, 224, note i. 

Hallamshire, survival of the ancient 
divisions of Deira, 221. 

" Ham " in place-names, 265, note 2. 

Hamon of Thoiigny, 486. 

Hampshire, see Hamtonshire. 

Hamtonshire ; victories of its fyrd 
over the Wikings, 72, 8i ; Wiking 
raids upon, 164; origin and mean- 
ing of its name, 222, 223 ; date of 
its formation, 222 ; its relation to 
Wiltshire, 223 ; ealdormen of, 224, 
note I ; see Wessex (Central), Wulf- 
heard. 

Hamton, see Southampton. 

"Hand" or "mund," its meaning, 21 
and note 2. 

Hanse Towns, their trade with Eng- 
land, 430. 

Harald, son of Cnut, 404; claims the 
crown of England, 459; called Hare- 
foot, 462 ; his claims supported by 
Leofric and the lithsmen of London, 
462 ; becomes King of all England 
save Wessex, 462 ; seizes Sandwich, 
428, 429, note I ; robs Emma of 
Cnut's treasure, 463 ; causes the 
aetheling Alfred to be blinded, 464; 
chosen king in Wessex, 465 ; his 
death and burial, 466 ; his body out- 
raged by Harthacnut, 466. 

Harald Blaatand, King of Denmark, 
date of his birth, 348, note i ; his 
policy in Normandy, 268 ; his de- 
signs upon Britain, 277, 278 ; his son 
Eric in Northumbria, 278 and note 
I ; his war with Otto the Great, 309 ; 
his son King of Semland, 278, 348 ; 
his over-lordship over Norway, 349 ; 
his alliance with Norman dukes, 
349 ; invades the Saxon Duchy, 

349 ; defeated by Otto, 349 ; again 
attacks Germany on Otto's death, 
349; becomes a Christian, 350; 
transfers his royal seat to Roeskilde, 

350 ; goes to dwell in Jutland, 350 ; 
opposed by his son Swein, 351 ; 
drives Swein from Denmark, 351 ; 
his defeat and death, 351 ; story of 
his burial-feast, 352, 353. 

Harald, son of Swein, becomes King 
of Denmark, 396 ; probable date of 
his death, 408, note i. 

Harald Fairhair (Harfager), King of 
Westfold, 162 ; becomes King of 



Norway, 162; drives out the Wik- 
ings from the Orkneys and founds 
an earldom there, 163 and note 3 ; 
his relations with ^thelstan (Guth- 
rum), 121-123 ; his death, 251. 

Harald Hardrada becomes King of. 
Norway, 484 ; invades England, 
548 ; his overthrow at Stamford 
Bridge, 549. 

Harald, Jarl, joins Guthrum's attack 
on Wessex, 93 ; slain at Ashdown, 
92, note I. 

Harald, see Strut-Harald. 

Harold, son of Godwine, 461 ; Earl of 
East Anglia, 481 ; opposes Svvein's 
restoration, 504 ; flies to Bristol, 
510 ; takes refuge in Ireland, 510; 
gathers ships at Dublin, 513; de- 
scent on Porlock, 514; joins his 
father, 514; his earldom restored, 
518; succeeds Godwine as Earl of 
Wessex, 534 ; his relations with 
Eadward, 534 ; with England, 535, 
561; his character, 561, 562, 563; 
his plans for the succession to the 
crown, 535 ; his policy in the dis- 
tribution of the earldoms, 537, 562 ; 
and towards ^Ifgar, 544; takes 
possession of the earldom of Here- 
ford, 544; his power and his aim, 

545 ; failure of his foreign policy, 

546 ; his oath to William, 547 ; ob- 
scurity of his administration, 562 ; 
his change of policy, 563; his possi- 
ble share in the rising of Northum- 
bria, 563 ; present at Eadward's 
death, 559 ; succeeds him as king, 

547 ; crowned by Ealdred, 559 ; de- 
feats the Norwegians at Stamford 
Bridge, 549 ; marches back to Lon- 
don, 549 ; encamps on Senlac, 549 ; 
his death, 551; his huscarls, 475, itote. 

Harold, or Heriold, claims the throne 
of Jutland, 61 ; his conversion and 
expulsion, 61. 

Harthacnut, son ofCnut, ruler in Den- 
mark under the guardianship of 
Ulf, 448 ; appointed by Cnut to 
succeed him in England, 460 ; his 
treaty with Magnus, 458; his claim 
supported by Godwine and Emma, 
461 ; chosen King of Wessex, 462 ; 
forsaken by Wessex, 465 ; plans in- 
vasion of England, 466 ; chosen 
king, 466 ; character of his reign, 
467 ; sends for Eadward, 467 ; his 
death, 468 ; redistribution of earl- 
doms in his time, 479. 



588 



INDEX. 



Harthacnut, or Hardegon, a Norwe- 
gian conqueror, supposed ancestor 
of Gorm the Old, 346, note i. 

Haslo, battle of, 142. 

Hasting, leader of the Wikings, 107 ; 
his defeat at Haslo, 142 ; his strug- 
gle with King Odo, 163 ; invades 
Kent, 163 ; held at bay by Alfred, 
164; encamps on the Colne, 164; 
the Danelaw rises in his aid, 164; 
attacked by Eadward and ^thel- 
red, 165 ; his attack on the Severn 
valley, 165 ; defeated, 165 ; occupies 
Chester, 166 ; besieged and driven 
out by j^thelred, 166 ; withdraws 
to a camp on the Lea, 166 ; rejoined 
by the fleet from Exeter, 166; re- 
turns to Frankland, 167. 

Hastings, mint at, 219 ; its sailors pur- 
sue Swein, 504 ; support Godwine, 
513, note 2 ; battle of, 549-551. 

" Haugh" in place-names, 265, note 2. 

" Heathenism," decrees against, un- 
der ^thelred II., 385 and note 4 ; 
under Cnut, 10, 11 ; strife of Chris- 
tianity with, 9- II; survival of its 
customs, II. 

Hebrides, the, Wiking settlements in, 
63, 207 ; conquered by the Orkney 
jarls, 538. 

Heca, Bishop of Selsey, 526. 

Hecanas, their land becomes Here- 
fordshire, 226. 

Helinandus, chaplain to Eadward the 
Confessor, 528. 

Heming, King of South Jutland, 61 ; 
peace with the Franks, 61. 

Hengestdun, battle of, 64. 

Henry the Fowler defeats Gorm the 
Old, 348. 

Henry III., Emperor, betrothed to 
Cnut's daughter, 449 ; his marringe, 
475 ; his character and policy, 495 ; 
his ecclesiastical reforms, 496, 500 ; 
revolt against, 497 ; the rebels ex- 
communicated by Leo IX., 501 ; calls 
on England for help, 503 ; the rebels 
submit, 503. 

Henry, King of France, restored by 
Robert the Devil, 455 : fights at 
Val-es-Dunes, 488 ; his war with 
Geoffrey of Anjou, 490; joined by 
"William, 490 ; favors Godwine, 514; 
his policy, 532 ; his invasion of Nor- 
mandy, 532 ; its failure, 533. 

Heorstan, father of St. Dunstan, 270. 

Herebriht, Ealdorman, slain by the 
Wikings, 75. 



Hereford, the North - Welsh chiefs 
submit to ^thelstan at, 211; bish- 
ops of, see Walter ; earls of, see 
Harold, Ralf, Swein. 

Herefordshire, the land of the Heca- 
nas, 225 ; and of the Magesastas, 400, 
479 ; severed from the Mercian earl- 
dom, 479 ; fighting between Nor- 
mans and English in, 508; raid of 
^Ifgar and Gruffydd upon, 544. 

Heretha-land, 48, note i. 

Hereward heads a revolt in the fens, 
556. 

Herfast, brother of Gunnor, 374, 

Herlouin, founder of Bee, his recejD- 
tion of Lanfranc, 485. 

Herlwin, Count of Ponthieu, attacked 
by Flanders, 255. 

Hermann, Bishop of the Wilsaetas 
(Ramsbury), 525, 526. 

Hertford founded by Eadward the 
Elder, 189. 

Hertfordshire, its origin, 228 ; forms 
part of the East -Anglian ealdor- 
manry, 250, note i ; joined with Es- 
sex, etc., under Leofwine, 544; Will- 
iam marches into, 552. 

Hexham, see of, its extinction, 89. 

Hildebrand, counsellor of Pope Leo 
IX., 497 ; of Nicholas II. and Al- 
exander II., 558. 

High reeve, or high thegn, office cre- 
ated by ^thelred, 378, 412, 524 ; be- 
comes permanent under Cnut, 524; 
develops into the " Secundarius 
Regis" and the justiciar, 524; see 
^fic, Eadric, Wulfgeat. 

"Higra," 113. 

Hlothere and Eadric, laws of, 20, notes 
I and 3, 323, note i. 

Hoard, the, Dunstan in charge of, 282, 
287 ; accompanies the king in Dun- 
stan's day, 387, note i ; settled at 
Winchester in Eadward's day, 387, 
note I ; its contents, 387, 523 ; their 
sources, 387 ; its importance under 
Eadward, 476, note. 

Holland, the Count of, revolts against 
the Emperor Henry III., 497. 

Holy Island, see Lindisfarne. 

Hordere, the, his various titles, 523 ; 
his functions, 524; growth of his 
importance as treasurer, 524; earli- 
est holders of the office, 524. 

Horseflesh, use of, 9. 

Horse-thegn, or constable, his office, 

173- 
Howel, King of the North Welsh, be- 



INDEX. 



589 



comes subject to Eadwardthe Elder, 
200, note; submits to yEthelstan, 
211 ; present in his Witenagemots, 
215 and note i. 
Hr^egel-thegn, 523. 
Hrolf, friend of Guthrum of East An- 
f'lia, 233 ; his forays along the Seine, 
233 ; their results, 233 ; his attacks 
upon Rouen, 234 ; his settlement m 
Frankland, 234 ; probably of Norse 
blood, 236, note i ; supports Charles 
the Simple against the dukes of 
Paris, 236 ; receives grant of the 
Bessin, 237. 
Hubba, brother of Ivar, 87, note i, 91 ; 
conquers East Anglia, 91 ; com- 
mands a Wiking fleet in the Bris- 
tol Channel, 93; joins Guthrum m 
the Severn, 104; defeated by the 
fyrd of Devon, 106. 
Hubert, St., his hermitage, 264. 
Hu"h the Great, son of Robert of Paris, 
236 ; marries ^thelstan's sister 
Eadhild, 240; attacks Normandy, 
240; brings back "Lewis from 
over -sea," 254; leagues vvith 
William Longsvvord and Arnult of 
Flanders against Lewis, 256 ; makes 
peace with Lewis, 261 ; joins Har- 
ald Blaatand and the Normans 
against him, 268 ; receives him as a 
captive, 268; his defiance to Ead- 
mund, 268. 
Hugh, Norman reeve of Exeter, 380 ; 

surrenders it to Swein, 380. 
Hundred, division of the shire, possi- 
bly instituted by iElfred, 135, note 5 ; 
first appears by name under Ead- 
gar, 335, note i ; names of hundreds 
in Dorset, 5 and note. 
Huntingdon occupied and fortified by 
Eadward the Elder, 196 ; Danes of, 
attack Bedford, 196 ; encamp at 
Tempsford, 196; swear allegiance 
to Eadward, 203. 
Huntingdonshire represents North 
Gwyra land, 227 ; forms part of the 
East-Anglian ealdormanry, 250, note 
I ; joined to Northumbria under 
Siward, 518. 
Hungary, Eadmund Ironside's children 
take refuge in, 403, 454 ; conquered 
by the Emperor Henry IH., 495. 
Hurstbourn, its labor-roll, 317. 
Huscarls instituted by Cnut, 40S, 414; 
remain with Emma at Winchester, 
462, 463 ; their development under 
Harold, 475, note. 



Huscarl-tax, its probable origin, 387, 
note 3. 

Husting, the Danish, 446. 

Hwiccas, land of the, one of the five 
regions of the Mercian kingdom, 
226; divided into the shires of 
Gloucester and Worcester, 226; 
their clearings in the south of Ar- 
den become Warwickshire, 226; 
earldom of, severed from Mercia by 
Cnut, 479; given to Odda, 517; 
ealdormen of, see Leofric, Leofwme ; 
earls of, see Odda. 

I 

Iceland, emigration from the Danelaw 
to, 124, 125, note I ; colonized by the 
Northmen, 162. 
Icknield Way, 193. 
India, Alfred sends alms to, 100. 
Ine, King of Wessex, his pilgrimage 
to Rome and death, 16; his laws, 
30 and note 1,21, note I ; their pro- 
visions concerning the Welsh, 21 ; 
concerning slaves, 320 ; concerning 
chapmen and trade, 323, note i ; ex- 
tent of the shire-organization in his 
time, 224. 
Ingelram, Count of Ponthieu, marries 
the sister of William the Conqueror, 
500 ; excommunicated by the Coun- 
cil of Rheims, 502. 
Inguar, see Ivar. 

Ireland, advance of the Wikings upon, 
59, 62, 63 ; their settlements in, 71 ; 
its earliest towns founded by them, 
71 ; first appearance oftlie Danes in, 
73, note I, 86 ; see Dublin, Ostmen. 
Iron supplied by Scandinavia to Brit- 
ain, 430. 
Ipswich, plundered by Norwegian 

Wikings, 354; its importance, 431. 
Islandshire, survival of the ancient 

divisions of Deira, 221. 
"Itene Wood," 167. 
Ittingford, the frith of Wedmore re- 
newed at, 183. 
Ivar, or Inguar, the Boneless, leader 
of the Wikings, attacks Munster, 86 ; 
brother of Hubba, 87, note 1,91; at- 
tacks East Anglia, 87 ; conquers it, 
87, note 1,91; returns to Deira, 93 ; 
his race become kings of Northum- 
bria, 117. , 

Jarrow burned by the Wikings, 49. 
"Jarl" corresponds to the English 
" aetheling," 55. 



590 



INDEX. 



Jedburgh, Wulfstan prisoner at, 280. 

Jelling, burial-mounds of Gorm and 
Thyra at, 348. 

Jeothwel, King of the North Welsh, 
becomes subject to Eadvvard the 
Elder, 200, note i. 

John XII., Pope, gives the pallium to 
Dunstan, 304. 

John the Old-Saxon made abbot of 
Athelney, 151, 170 and note 2. 

Jomsborg, Harald Blaatand's strong- 
hold on the Baltic, 351 ; Harald dies 
there, 351; its independence under 
Palnatoki, 351 ; Swein's dealings 
with, 352 ; its jarls defeated by Jarl 
Hakon, 390 ; see Palnatoki, Sigwald. 

Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, 
her marriage with ^thelwulf and 
coronation, 78, 79, note I ; her mar- 
riage with Baldwin Iron-arm, 175. 

Judith, sister or daughter of Baldwin 
of Lille, marries Tostig, son of God- 
wine, 504. 

Judwal, King of North Wales, story 
of his tribute to Eadgar, 310, note 3 ; 
present in ^^thelstan's Witenage- 
mots, 215 and note i. 

Jurisprudence, early English, 21. 

Justice, public, its original ground- 
work, 21 ; earliest conception of, 22 ; 
reorganized by Alfred, 132, 133 ; 
difficulty of enforcing, 28, 134, 135 ; 
its regulation under Jfethelstan, 216, 
217; folk's justice, 27; king's jus- 
tice, 29. 

Justiciar, his office, 96, 412, 476, note, 

524- 

Jutland, settlement of the Danes in, 
83 ; conquered by Gorm, 347. 

Jutland, South, the original Engle 
land, 60 ; its kings dependent on the 
kingdom of Westfold, 60-62 ; kings 
of, see Godfrid, Harold, Heming. 

K 

Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots 
of Dalriada, succeeds to the Pictish 
throne, 177; Edinburgh ceded to 
him, 311; and perhaps Lothian, 452 ; 
his " raids upon Saxony," 452. 

Kent, lingering heathenism in, 9 ; its 
Witan petition ^thelstan to enforce 
justice, 29 ; revolts against Offa and 
Cenwulf, 43 ; its relation to Wessex 
under Ecgberht, 66 ; its wealth and 
importance, 74, 75 ; its fyrd defeated 
by the Wikings in Thanet, 76 ; its 
eastern shores ravaged by pirates 



from Gaul, 81 ; united to Wessex at 
the accession of ^thelred, 82, note 
I; invaded by Hasting, 163, 164; 
early use of coin in, 218; kingdom 
of, its shires perhaps represented by 
the lathes, 222 ; becomes a shire of 
the West-Saxon realm, 225 ; called 
" Kent - shire," 225, note i ; iron- 
mines in, 322 ; salt-works in, 322 
and note 2 ; harried by pirates from 
Ireland, 367 ; by Thurkill, 390 ; sup- 
ports Godwine, 513, note 2; joined 
with Essex, etc., under Leofwine, 
544 ; revolts against Odo of Bayeux, 
553 ; kings o^see ^thelbald, ^thel- 
berht, ^thelstan, iEthelwulf, Eadric, 
Hlothere. 

Kesteven, 249, note 3, 250. 

Kettleside, 265. 

King, the, his judicial powers, 29 ; ap- 
peals to, 29 ; his justice supersedes 
the folk's justice, 29 ; his court, 30 ; 
his "grith," 32 ; his progresses and 
their results, 31, 32 ; growth of his 
dignity, 32, 33,291 ; his consecration, 
33' 295 ; organization of his house- 
hold, 33, 172; change in the con- 
ception of his position, 133 ; becomes 
the source of justice, 133 ; his su- 
preme jurisdiction, 134 and note i ; 
principle of personal allegiance, 199, 
200 ; his territorial character, 202 ; 
importance of his presence and per- 
sonal action, 247, 291 ; weakness of 
his position, 291, 292; his share in 
the appointment of bishops, 333, 
505 ; growth of the royal adminis- 
tration, 523 ; his writ, 525. 

" King's Court," 524. 

Kingdoms, the Three, i, 2, 38; their 
influence on the kingship, 33 ; on 
social classes, 34 ; on folk-moot and 
Witenagemot, 35, 36 ; weakness of 
Northumbria and Mercia, 37-44 ; 
their break-up, 44-47. 

Kings, tribal, tlieir relation to the 
sethelings, 34 ; number of, in the 
earlier states, 38 ; their extinction, 
38 and note i. 

Kingston, crowning of .(Ethelstan at, 
209, note 2 ; of Eadred, 275 and note 
2 ; of ^thelred II., 341, note. 

Kirbyshire, survival of the ancient di- 
visions of Deira, 221. 

Kirkshire or parish, 13, 222. 

Kirtlington, Witenagemot at, 338. 

Kyle in Ayrshire, 263. 

Kynesige, Bishop of Lichfield, kins- 



INDEX. 



591 



man of Dunstan, 270, note i ; sent 
with Dunstan to bring Eadwig back 
to the coronation feast, 296. 



Labor-rents at Hurstbourn, 317 ; at 
Dyddenham, 318. 

Lake district, Norwegian settlements 
in, 265 and note 2. 

Lambay Island, 63, note 4. 

Lambeth, Harthacnut dies at, 468. 

Lancashire, its origin, 228, note ; Nor- 
wegian settlers in, 265. 

Lancaster, 264. 

Land, its possession the test of free- 
dom, 200. 

Landnama-bok, 125. 

Land's End, ^thelstan at, 212. 

Land-tax, its beginning, 389 and note ; 
its assessment, 389 ; the basis of 
English finance, 414 ; its effects, 
414 ; its amount, 447 ; see Danegeld. 

Land-wehr, the, 127. 

Lanfranc, a citizen of Pavia, at Av- 
ranches, 485 ; his school at Bee, 
486 ; opposes William's marriage, 
531 ; reconciled with him, 531 ; ne- 
gotiates at Rome, 531. 

Laon, city of the West P'ranks, 255. 

Lastingham destroyed by Danes, 89. 

Lathes of Kent, 222. 

Law, early conception of, 19 ; written 
law, its limited sphere, 20; criminal 
law, Eadmund's reform of, 26, 27, 
267. 

Lawmen at Cambridge, 442, note 3 ; 
Chester, 425; Lincoln, 117,432,442, 
note 3 ; Stamford, 117, 442, note 3. 

Laws of Alfred, 139, 140 and 7iote i ; 
^thelberht, 20 and notes i and 2 ; 
^thelstan, 216 and note 4, 225 and 
note 2 ; Cnut, 427 ; Eadgar, 408 ; 
Hlothere and Eadric, 20, notes i and 
3 ; Wihtraed, 20, notes i and 3 ; Ine, 
20 and note i, 21, note i. 

Legates sent by Alexander II., 559 ; 
their share in Wulfstan's elevation, 

559- 

Leicester, 226 ; one of the Five Bor- 
oughs, 116; taken by /Ethelflaed, 
198; date of its submission, 183, 
note 3 ; stormed by the Ostmen, 
260 ; recovered by Eadmund, 260. 

Leicestershire, 226 ; Danish settle- 
ments in, 118; severed from Mer- 
cia and joined with Nottingham, 
etc., under Beorn, 479, 482. 

Leo IX., becomes pope, 496 ; his re- 



forms, 500 ; excommunicates the 
rebel princes, 501 ; quashes Spear- 
hafoc's appointment to London, 507 ; 
taken prisoner by the Normans, 
530 ; lays Normandy under inter- 
dict, 531. 

Leofa, slayer of Eadmund I., 269. 

Leofric, son of Leofwine, Ealdorman 
of the Hwiccas, 409 ; Earl of Mer- 
cia, 461 ; opposes Godwine's policy, 
462 ; supports the claims of Har- 
ald, 462 ; demands a division of the 
realm, 462 ; his royal descent, 479 ; 
his influence, 479 ; opposes God- 
wine, 484 ; his share in the religious 
revival, 496 ; joins the king at 
Gloucester, 509 ; his death, 544. 

Leofric, chancellor to the Confessor, 
525 ; Bishop of Crediton, 525, 526. 

Leofsige, Ealdorman of Essex, 358 and 
notes 3 and 4 ; his jurisdiction over 
the reeves of Oxford and Bucking- 
ham, 250, note I ; sent to buy a truce 
with the pirates, 378; his "pride 
and daring," 378 and note 3 ; slays 
^fic, 379 and note i ; banished, 379 
and note 2. 

Leofwine, Bishop of Lichfield, 558. 

Leofwine, Ealdorman of the Hwiccas, 
357, note I, 358 ; of Mercia, 403, 409. 

Leofwine, son of Godwine, flies to 
Dublin, 510; his earldom, 544. 

Leominster, the Abbess of, 483. 

Leonaford, 153. 

Lethra, 347 and note. 

Lewes, mint at, 219 ; tolls of, 320. 

Lewis the Gentle, Emperor, suj^ports 
Harold in Jutland, 61. 

Lewis the German, his struggle with 
pirates, 141 ; his death, 141. 

Lewis III., King of the West Franks, 
defeats Guthrum at Saucourt, 141 ; 
his death, 141. 

Lewis "from over -sea," son of 
Charles the Simple and Eadgifu, at 
the court of .^thelstan, 254; re- 
called by the West Franks, 254 ; 
breaks with Hugh of Paris and the 
Normans, 255 ; recalls his mother, 
255 ; his alliance with ^thelstan 
and Arnulf of Flanders, 256 ; break- 
up of their league, 256 ; his war 
with Otto, 256; league of Hugh, 
William, and Arnulf against, 256 ; 
driven from Lorraine, 261 ; recon- 
ciled with William, Otto, and Hugh, 
261 ; master of Normandy, 262 ; 
I taken prisoner by Harald Blaatand 



592 



INDEX. 



and the Normans, 268 ; his libera- 
tion demanded by Eadmund, 268. 

Lewton, Witenagemot at, 213, note i, 
215, notes. 

Lichfield, bishops of, see Kynesige, 
Leofwine. 

Liege, a priest of, his Life of St. Dun- 
stan, 269, note 2. 

Limerick founded by AVikings, 71. 

IJmoges pillaged by Wikings, 73. 

Lincoln, one of the Five Boroughs, 
117 ; its lawmen, 117, 432, 442, note 
3 ; submits to Eadvvard the Elder, 
199; its growth, 432 ; connection of 
its merchants with the North, 431 ; 
its merchant-gild, 432. 

Lincolnshire, 226, 227 ; trithings and 
wapentakes in, 117; Danish settle- 
ments in, 117 ; attached to the Mer- 
cian earldom, 536 ; joined with 
Leicester and Nottingham under 
Beorn, 479, 482. 

Lindisfarne plundered, 49, 89 ; Bishop 
Eardulf expelled from, 102. 

Lindiswaras, land of, becomes Lincoln- 
shire, 226, 227. 

Lindsey, kings of, 38, note i ; descents 
of the Wikings on, 74; its bishop 
expelled by the Danes, 89 ; submits 
to Swein, 393 ; negotiates with 
Cnut, 396. 

Literature under Alfred, 148-151 ; 
English prose, its birth, 153 ; its 
character, 154 and notes ; ^Elfred's 
translations, 155-157, 161 ; the 
Chronicle, 158-160 and notes; lit- 
erature under /Elfred's successors, 
284 and note i ; influence of the 
Glastonbury school on, 2S5 ; differ- 
ence between the first and second 
schools of, 285 ; its revival under 
Dunstan and Eadgar, 325, 327. 

Lithsmen of London, 443; support 
Harald Harefoot's claims, 462. 

Lochlann, White, 63, note i. 

London, the mother-city of Essex, 143 ; 
under Mercian rule, 437-439 ; con- 
quered by Ecgberht, 143 ; sacked 
by the Wikings, 75, 143 ; Danes win- 
ter at, 100, note 2 ; doubtful story 
of .Alfred's besieging them there, 
100, note 2 ; becomes subject to 
Guthrum, 1 18, 144 ; passes into /El- 
fred's hands, 144 ; repeopled by 
him, 144 and note ; its walls restored, 
188, 441 ; intrusted to ^thelred of 
Mercia, 144, 164 ; its severance from 
Essex and formation of its depen- 



dent shire, 145 and note 2, 228 ; its 
situation, 145, note 2 ; its men attack 
the Danes in Essex, 165 ; taken from 
Mercia and annexed to Wessex by 
Eadward the Elder, 188 ; mint at, 
219; possibly included in the East- 
Saxon ealdormanry, 250 ; ^Ethelred 
IL gathers a fleet at, 361 ; repulses 
Swein and Olaf, 364 and note i ; 
successfully resists Swein, 394 ; 
sends hostages to him, 394 ; .^thel- 
red returns to, 396 ; yEthelred dies 
at, 399 ; besieged by Cnut and Ead- 
ric, 399 ; Eadmund chosen king in, 
399 ; its defence against Cnut, 399 ; 
ceded to Cnut, 401, note; Cnut 
crowned at, 408; obscurity of its 
early history, 434; disappearance 
of Roman life from, 434, 435, 439, 
jiote 2 ; its heathenism, 435 ; its 
growth, 435; church and monastery 
of St. Paul at, 435 ; its trade, 438, 
440, 445 ; sokes in, 436 ; churches 
in, 436, 438, 7/ote I ; its growth under 
Bishop Erkenwald, 438, 7iote 1 ; its 
oldest part, 438 ; site of its port, 
438; its wic-reeve or port-reeve, 
438, 443 ; Oifa's vill in, 439 and ftote 
I ; East-Cheap, 440 ; its bridge, 439, 
}!ote 2 ; its geographical position, 
440 ; its importance under ^thel- 
stan, 442 ; its frith-gild, 442 ; its 
eight moneyers, 219, 442 ; cnichten- 
gild, 443 ; merchant-gild, 443, 462 ; 
connection of its municipal with its 
ecclesiastical life, 441, note 3, 443 ; 
its port-mannimot, 443 ; its growth 
under ^thelstan's successors, 443, 
444; under Eadgar and ^thelred, 
445,446; Danes settled in, 446; its 
taxation in Cnut's first year, 447 ; 
becomes the centre of the kingdom 
under Cnut, 447; its lithsmen, 443, 
462 ; Flemish merchants in, 499 ; 
declares for Godwine, 515; Ead- 
ward the aetheling dies at, 545 ; sur- 
renders to William, 552 ; his char- 
ter to, 553 ; Witenagemots at, 408, 
509, 515; bishops of, see Dunstan, 
Erkenwald, Mellitus, Spearhafoc, 
Theodred, William, Wini. 

Lorraine harried by the Wikings, 141 ; 
its loyalty to the Karolingian house, 
256 ; becomes subject to Lewis 
from over-sea, 256 ; Lewis driven 
out of, 261. 

Lorraine, Lower, see Godfrey. 

Lotharingians in royal chapel, 525> S~^' 



INDEX. 



593 



Lothian, 452; possibly granted by 
Eadgar to Kenneth, 452 ; granted 
by Cnut to Malcolm II., 453 ; re- 
sults of the cession, 453. 

" Lunden-wara," the, 441, note 3. 

Lyderic, Count of Flanders, 492. 

Lymne, Wikings land at, 163. 

M 

Macbeth, Mormser of Moray, murders 
Duncan, 475 ; succeeds him as King 
of Scots, 475, 538 ; defeated by Si- 
ward, 539 ; his death, 539. 

Maerleswegen, shire -reeve of Deira, 
joins revolt against Tostig, 541, 
note 2. 

Magesjetas, 400 ; join Edmund Iron- 
side, 400 ; J6'£' Herefordshire. 

Magnus, son of St. Olaf, King of Nor- 
way, 458 ; treaty with Harthacnut, 
458 ; claims throne of Denmark, 
475 ; drives Swein Estrithson out, 
483 ; threatens to invade England, 

. 483- 

Maine conquered by Geoffrey Martel, 
489 ; by William, 533. 

Malcolm I., King of Scots, son of Con- 
stantine, 262; Cumbria granted to, 
266. 

Malcolm II. defeated at Durham, 383 ; 
again invades Northumbria, 452 ; 
submits to Cnut, 452 ; receives a 
grant of Lothian, 453. 

Malcolm III., son of Duncan, becomes 
King of Scotland, 539 ; sworn broth- 
er of Tostig, 543 ; marries Marga- 
ret, 556; swears fealty to William, 
556. 

Maldon fortified by Eadward the El- 
der, 195 ; Danes defeated at, 196 ; 
victory of Norwegians at, 354. 

Malger, Archbishop of Rouen, 531. 

Man, Isle of, colonized by the Norwe- 
gians, 265 ; ^thelred II. makes a 
descent upon, 368. 

Manchester (Mancuniuin) fortified by 
Eadward the Elder, 206. 

Manors, labor-rolls of, 317-319- 

Margaret, daughter of the aetheling 
Eadward, 536; her marriage, 556. 

Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V., 
sought in marriage by William of 
Normandy, 498 ; marriage forbid- 
den, 502 ; it takes place, 531. 

Mellitus, Bishop of London, his mis- 
sion - work, 434, 435 ; founds St. 
Paul's, 435. 

Melrose destroyed by the Danes, 89. 

38 



Merchant-gild of Lincoln, 432 ; Lon- 
don, 443, 462 ; Nottingham, 422. 

Mercia, lingering heathenism in, 9, 10 ; 
earliest written law in, 19: its con- 
dition at the close of the eighth cen- 
tury, 43, 44 ; its five great ealdor- 
men, 44, 1 16, note 3 ; its five regions, 

226 ; its dependent relation to Wes- 
sex, 90, 137, 184 ; threatened by the 
Danes, 90 ; makes peace with them, 
91 ; pays tribute to them, 92 ; con- 
quered by them, loi ; its division 
into Danish and English, loi, note 
2, 116; Eastern or Danish Mercia, 
the district of the Five Boroughs, 
116, 117; Western or English Mer- 
cia, its extent, 116, 136; its impor- 
tance, 136 ; its union with Wessex 
under Alfred, 137 ; the intellectual 
revival under him, 148-150 ; raid of 
the Wikings upon, 187 ; ravaged by 
Danes, 188; part of it annexed to 
Wessex, 188; wholly annexed, 199; 
traces of its separate existence in 
the election of yEthelstan, 209, note 
2 ; traces of its original divisions, 
226, 227 ; its shire - organization, 
226 ; derivation of its shire-names, 

227 ; Eadgar chosen king of, 299 ; 
reunited to Wessex, 302 ; disappear- 
ance of monasticism in, 328; rav- 
aged by Cnut, 399 ; kings of, called 
"Kings of the English" by the 
Franks, 43 ; their policy towards 
the Church, 68; their burial-place 
at Repton, loi ; see yEthelstan, 
Beorhtwulf, Burhred, Ceolvvulf, Ead- 
gar, Offa, WiglafjWulfhere ; ealdor- 
manry of, 137 ; created by ^Elfred, 
247 ; suppressed by Eadward, 247 ; 
revived by Eadwig, 297 ; significance 
of its revival, 297 ; its extent under 
Eadwig, 297 and note 2 ; suppressed, 
342 ; revived in favor of Eadric, 
385 ; called " Myrcenarice," 392 ; 
ealdormen of, see yElfhere, ^ifric, 
/Ethelred, Eadric ; earldom of, its 
extent under Leofric, 479 ; further 
reduced, 481 ; again extended, 517, 
537 ; earls of, see ^Ifgar, Eadwine, 
Leofric, Leofwiiie. 

Meredydd, son of Owen, 359. 

Mersc-wara, 75. 

Merton, victory of the Danes at, 

99. 
Middlesborough, 112. 
Middlesex, its origin, 145, iiote 2, 146, 

228 ; part of East-Saxon ealdorman- 



594 



INDEX. 



ry, 250 ; joined with Essex, etc., 
under Leofwine, 544. 

Middleton, Witenagemot at, 213, note 
I, 215, note 2. 

Mieczyslav, Duke of the Poles, 353. 

Mildred, St., 420, note 2 ; church dedi- 
cated to her in Bristol, 426 ; Oxford, 
420 and note 2 ; London, 439. 

Mills in Dorset, 7, note. 

Milton, Hasting winters at, 163. 

Mines, salt, in Cheshire, 7, note ; iron, 
in Kent, 322 ; lead, in the Severn 
Valley, 322. 

Mints, 219 ; at Bristol, 426 and note i ; 
Gloucester, 422 ; Oxford, 138, 421. 

Monarchy, its character and growth, 
290, 291 ; causes of its weakness, 
246, 247, 291 ; its struggle with feu- 
dalism, 289, 290, 292, 293 ; see Eal- 
dormanries, Ealdormen ; its alliance 
with the Church, 67-69, 304, 305 ; 
see Crown, King. 

Monasticism, its decay, 12, 170 and 
note I, 328; revival of, 330; atti- 
tude of Dunstan towards it, 330, 
331, note ; of Eadgar, 330 ; its local 
character, 331 ; causes of its failure, 
331 ; its part in political contest, 
337, 339, note 2 ; attitude of God- 
wine and Leofric towards, 495, 
496. 

Montacute, 554. 

Montreuil taken by Arnulf, 255 ; re- 
taken by William Longsword, 256. 

Moot, folk-, its decline, 35 ; answers 
to " Thing," 55. 

Moray, Mormaer of, see Macbeth. 

Morcant, under -king of the North 
Welsh, present in ^Ethelstan's Wit- 
enagemots, 215 and note i ; in Ea- 
dred's, 286. 

Morkere, son of yElfgar, succeeds Tos- 
tig as Earl of Northumbria, 547 ; 
submits to William, 552, 553 ; re- 
volts against him, 556 ; joins Here- 
ward, 556. 

Mortain, counts of, 375. 

Mortemer, battle of, 533. 

"Mund," 21, note 2, 23. 

" Mund-bryce, 21, note 2. 

Munster, Ivar the Boneless in, 86. 

" Myrcenarice," for Mercia, 392. 

N 
Nantes sacked by the Wikings, 73. 
Neal of St. Sauveur, 486. 
Nicaea, Robert the Devil dies at, 457. 
Nicolas II., Pope, 558 ; consecrates 



Walter and Gisa, 558; Tostig's 
visit to, 546, note I, 558. 

"Nithing," 504. 

Norfolk, 228, note. 

Norhamshire, 221. 

Normandy, its connection with Eng- 
lish history, 234, 235 ; with the Eng- 
lish Danelaw, 236 ; its influence on 
French and English politics, 237, 
239 ; claims to supremacy over the 
Bretons, 240; attacked by Hugh 
the Great and the Bretons, 240 ; its 
greatness under William Long- 
sword, 261 ; revolts against him, 
372 ; its anarchy after his death, 
261 ; mastered by Lewis, 262 ; 
stirred up against him by Harald 
Blaatand, 268; its first treaty with 
England, 360, 361, note ; its friendly 
relation to the Northmen, 367, 370, 
note 2; its growth under Richard 
the Fearless, 309, 371-373 ; under 
Richard the Good, 375 ; beginnings 
of its connection with England, 376, 
377; Emma and her sons take ref- 
uge in, 395 ; and ^thelred, 395 ; 
the English sethelings in, 396, 454 ; 
, its anarchy in William's early years, 
457, 458; the Truce of God, 471 ; 
Eadward's relations to,- 473 ; revolts 
against William, 487 ; its relations 
with Flanders, 497, 499 ; hatred of 
Godwine, 519; laid under interdict, 
531 ; dukes of, see Hrolf, Richard, 
Robert, William. 

Normans called "pirates" by the 
Franks, 237 ; their temper, 404, 455, 
457 ; Norman chaplains, 526 ; com- 
panions of the zetheling Alfred, 
their fate, 464 ; followers of Ead- 
ward, 473 ; their aims, 490, 491 ; 
outlawed, 516; take refuge in Scot- 
land, 538. 

Northampton submits to Eadward, 
196 ; burned by Thurkill, 391. 

Northamptonshire, 227 ; part of East- 
Anglian ealdormanry, 250 and note 
I ; joined with Northumbria under 
Siward, 518; under Tostig, 544; 
feorm of, 387, note 3. 

Northmen, use and meaning of the 
name, 48, note, 63, note I, 65, note ; 
see Danes, Norwegians, Wikings. 

Northumberland, 228, note i. 

Northumbria, lingering heathenism in, 
9, ID ; absence of written law in, 20 ; 
fall of its royal house, 39; civil wars 
in, 39, 40, 87 ; the Church in, during 



INDEX. 



595 



the anarchy, 40 ; its schook, 40, 41 ; 
submits to Ecgbeiht, 91 and note 4 ; 
first appearance of the Wikings in, 
49 ; conquered by the Danes, 87, 
88 ; ruin of its learning and civiliza- 
tion, 89, 90 ; divided by Halfdene, 
no; its organization under the 
Danes, 115, 117; joins a league 
against Eadward, 208; submission 
to him, 208 and note i ; yEthelstan 
becomes king of, 212; rises against 
. /Etlielstan, 232, 243 ; descent of the 
Ostmen upon, 242 ; severed from 
Wessex, 246 ; its inhabitants in 
.^thelstan's day, 252 and note 2, 
253 ; rises against Eadmund, 259 ; 
O'laf, Sihtric's son, King of, 277 ; its 
Witan swear allegiance to Eadred, 
277 ; receive Eric Hiring as king, 
278, 279 ; Eric driven from, 278, note 
I, 279 ; ravaged by Eadred, 279 ; 
again submits to him, 279 ; Olaf re- 
turns to, 279 ; its second revolt un- 
der Eric, 280 ; its final submission, 
280; Eadred becomes King of, 281 ; 
reduced to an earldom, 281 ; joins 
the revolt against Eadwig, 300 and 
note : absence of religious houses 
in, 330 ; submits to Cnut, 398; in- 
vaded by the Scots, 383,417, 451 ; 
its northern part joined to Scotland, 
452 ; earldom of, divided, 357 ; re- 
united, 383 ; struggle of the rival 
earls in, 383, note ; again divided, 
477 ; reunited under Siward, 477, 
note I ; its independence under him, 
474 ; its wild condition, 477 and note 
I, 478 and note, 479, 541, note 2 ; 
Nottingham, etc., joined with it, 518; 
brought fully under the royal power, 
540, 541 and note i ; ravaged by 
William, 555 ; kings of, see /Ethel- 
red, ^thelstan, yEthelwold, Alch- 
red, Alfwold, Bagsecg, Eadberht, 
Eadred, Eardwulf, Ecgberht, Ecwils, 
Eric, Guthferth, Halfdene, Olaf, Os- 
red, Oswulf, Ragnald, Ricsig, Siht- 
ric; earls oi, see iElfhelm, Copsige, 
Eadwulf, Ealdred, Eric, Morkere, 
Oslac, Oswulf, Siward, Tostig, Uht- 
red, Waltheof ; see also Bernicia and 
Deira. 

Northweorthig, see Derby. 

Norway, its beginnings, 60 ; its phys- 
ical character, 53; starting-point 
of the Northmen's first attack, 63 
and note i ; united under Harald 
Fairhair, 162 ; Harald Blaatand 



over -lord of, 349; ruled by Jarl 
Hakon, 354 ; attacked by Swein, 
354 ; claimed by Olaf Tryggvason, 
363 ; revolts against Hakon, 365 ; 
under - kingdom of England, 407 ; 
ruled by Cnut's nephew Hakon, 
407 ; revolts against Cnut, 448, 450 ; 
Swein, son of C^nut, driven out of, 
458 ; Tostig takes refuge in, 548 ; 
kings of, see Cnut, Eric, Harald, 
Magnus, Olaf, Swein. 

Norwegians, character of their coun- 
try, 51, 53, 54, 171; their temper, 
52 ; their love of fighting, 52, 53 ; 
of home, 52 and 7iote ; of the sea, 
54 ; their usages, 54, 55 ; their re- 
ligion, 55 ; their warfare, 56; their 
ships, 56 and notes, 84, Jtote ; causes 
of their movement to the south, 57, 
58 and note, 59 ; their first coming 
to England, 48,49 ; civil wars among, 
60 ; alliance with the Welsh, 64, 72 ; 
their settlement in Shetland, 63 ; in 
the Hebrides, Orkneys, Caithness, 
Sutherland, and Ross, 63, 103, 163, 
207 ; in Ireland, 62-65, 7'j 73' '"'^^^ 
1,86; in Yorkshire, in, 112 ; in 
Westmoringa-land, 263 ; in Man, 
265 ; in Lancashire and the Lake 
district, 265 and. note 2 ; in Iceland, 
125, 162; their settlements marked 
by the terminations " by," "thwaite," 
and " dale," III; movement towards 
unity among, 161, 162 ; threaten the 
Scot kingdom, 207 ; their settlements 
in Northumbria in ^thelstan's day, 
252 and note 2, 253 ; enmity of Ead- 
mund to, 258; attack East Anglia, 
354 ; their victory at Maldon, 354 ; 
treaty made with them, 359 ; its 
policy, 362, note i ; plot to "be- 
trap " them, 361, 362, note i ; sack 
Bamborough, 363 ; extent of their 
trade, 430, 431,432; see Northmen, 
Wikings. 

Norwich, its position, and importance, 
381, 431 ; harried by Swein, 381 ; its 
dues to the king, 431. 

Nottingham, Danes winter at, 90 ; at- 
tacked by y^thelred and Burhred, 
90; one of the Five Boroughs, 117, 
199; its situation and importance, 
199, 421 ; fortified by Eadward, 199 ; 
his bridge and mounds there, 206, 
421 ; duties of its burghers, 422 ; its 
merchant - gild, 422 ; cnichten - gild, 
422. 

Nottinghamshire, 227 ; joined with 



596 



INDEX. 



Lincoln and Leicester under Beorn, 
479, 482; with Northumbria, 518, 

544. o 

Oath, its use in folk-moot, 24; see Al- 
legiance. 

Odda, Ealdorman of Devon, 106. 

Odda or Odo, kinsman of Eadward 
the Confessor, 474; his earldom, 
511,518,537; his deatii, 544. 

Odin's ring, 103. 

Odo, son of Robert the Strong, his 
defence of Paris, 234 ; becomes king 
of the West Franks, 234 ; his strug- 
gle with Hasting, 163. 

Odo, Bishop of Ramsbury, afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury, his Dan- 
ish origin, 214 and note 2, 313 and 
7iote 2 ; negotiates a peace between 
Eadmund and Olaf, 260 ; crowns 
Eadwig, 295 ; sends Oswald to 
Fleury, 329 ; denounces Eadwig's 
marriage, 299 ; withdraws from his 
court, 298, note 2, 299 ; sentences 
Eadwig and ^Ifgifu to separation, 
299 ; consecrates Dunstan, 301, note 
3 ; banishes ^Elfgifu, 301, 302, note 
I ; returns to court, 302 and note 2 ; 
his death, 302. 

Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother 
of William the Conqueror, 485 ; Re- 
gent of England, 553 ; Kent revolts 
against him, 553. 

Odo, brother of H enry. King of France, 

533- 

Odo, Ji?^ Odda. 

Offa, King of Mercia, his efforts to se- 
cure the protection of pilgrims from 
Alpine robbers, 17; his laws, 20, 
note I ; gives ^thelwold Moll his 
daughter to wife, 39; his coinage, 
219 ; his vill in London, 439 and note. 

" Ofer-hyrnesse," 134, note 2. 

Olaf, St., King of Norway, 448; driven 
out by Cnut, 450 ; his trading enter- 
prises, 113; church of, in Chester, 
425 ; London, 446 ; York, 434, 540. 

Olaf the 'Fair, son of Ingialld, 86 and 
note I ; attacks the Irish coast, 86 ; 
occupies Dublin, 86 ; attacks the 
Scot kingdom, 87. 

Olaf or Anlaf, King of Dublin, his es- 
cape from Brunanburh, 244, note i ; 
raises the Danelaw against Ead- 
mund, 259 ; storms Tamworth and 
Leicester, 260 ; becomes Eadmund's 
under-king, 260 ; his death, 259, 
note. 



Olaf or Anlaf, Sihtric's son, takes ref- 
uge at the Scottish court, 242 ; mar- 
ries the daughter of Constantine, 
243 ; goes to Dublin, 233, 243 ; be- 
comes the leader of the Ostmen, 
243 ; raises the north against .-Ethel- 
stan, 243 ; his escape from Brunan- 
burh, 244 and note i ; succeeds 
the other Olaf as King of Dublin, 
259, note ; under-king of Northum- 
bria beyond the Tees, 277 ; driven 
out by Eadric, 278 ; returns, 279 ; 
account of him in the saga, 281, 
note ; rules in Dublin and becomes 
Eadgar's ally, 310 and note i. 

Olaf Tryggvason, his childhood, 113, 
note 4; claims the throne of Nor- 
way, 363 ; his W iking adventures, 
363 ; joins Swein in an invasion of 
England, 364; his conversion and 
baptism, 363, note 3 ; treaty with 
^thelred and withdrawal, 365 ; 
saga of his death, 368-370. 

Olaf, King of Sweden, 368. 

Olaf, called "Tree-feller," 51, note. 

Olney, treaty of, 401. 

Onund, the " Road-maker," 51, note. 

Ordgar, Ealdorman of the Wealhcyn, 
303 ; father-in-law of jEthelwold, 
303, note 2 ; of Eadgar, 303, 7/^/1? i, 
307, note I. 

Ordmsr, Ealdorman, 307, note i. 

Orkneys, Wikings in, 63, 163, 207 ; 
Harald Fairhair sets up a Norse 
earldom in, 163 and note 3, 207; 
starting-point of attacks on the 
Scot kingdom, 207 ; jarls of, masters 
of Caithness, 102, 53,8 ; of the west- 
ern isles, 538, 539 ; see Sigurd. 

Ormside, 265. 

" Orosius," .■Alfred's translation of, 
155,7/^/',?, 156, 157; first account of 
Denmark, 347, 7iote. 

Osbeorn, son of Ulf, 469. 

Osbeorn, son of Siward, 539. 

Osbern, Jarl, joins Guthrum, 93 ; slain 
at Ash down, 93 and note i. 

Osbern, his "Life of St. Dunstan," 269, 
note 2 ; his account of the revolt 
against Eadwig, 300, note. 

Osbern, chaplain to Eadward, 526. 

Osburga, mother of Alfred, 173. 

Osgar, Clerk of Glastonbury, sent to 
Fleury, 329 and note 2. 

Oslac, the "great earl" of Northum- 
bria, 311 ; date of his elevation, 
303, note I, 311 ; banished, 339. 

Osred, son of Alchred, King of North- 



INDEX. 



597 



umbiia, 4.0; revolt against, 40; 
takes refuge in Man, 40 ; slain, 40. 

Ostmen, the name, 71, 86, note 2 ; alli- 
ance with the Welsh, 64, 77 ; their 
quarrels, 72, 73, note i ; attack the 
Scot kingdom, 86; their alliance 
with the Danes of Northumbria, 
205, 232, 242 ; stir up the Danelaw 
to revolt, 243, 259 ; invade Mid- 
Britain, 260 ; their alliance with the 
English kings, 310; with Godvvine, 
510; their trade with Chester, 423 ; 
with Bristol, 426. 

Oswald, nephew of Archbishop Odo, 
329; his northern blood, 313 and 
note 2 ; at Fleury, 329 ; Bishop of 
Worcester, 330 ; his work on the 
Chronicle, 326 ; his share in the 
monastic revival, 330 ; Archbishop 
of York, 331; joins Dunstan in 
crowning Eadgar, 336 ; crowns Ead- 
ward, 338 ; his death, 327, note. 

Oswine, King of Cumbria, 242, note 4. 

Oswini, last king of Deira, 38, note i. 

Oswulf, King of Northumbria, suc- 
ceeds Eadberht, 39 ; slain, 39. 

Oswulf, High Reeve of Bernicia, 281 ; 
made Earl of Northumbria, 281. 

Oswulf, son of Eadwulf of Bernicia, 
revolts against Tostig, 542, note ; his 
rivalry with Copsige, 542, note; 
slain, 542, note. 

Othere, earliest authority for the set- 
tlements of the Danes, 83, note 3 ; 
his account of the Northman's land, 
171, 172; his description of Den- 
mark, 347, note. 

Otto, son of the German king Henry, 
marries Eadgyth, daughter of Ead- 
vvard the Elder, 239 ; crowned at 
Aachen, 256 ; his war with Lewis 
from over - sea, 256 ; drives Lewis 
from Lorraine, 261 ; makes peace 
with him, 261 ; revival of the Em- 
pire under him, 286, 494 ; his claim 
to supremacy, 286, 494; its limits, 
495 ; sends ambassadors to Ead- 
mund, 273 and note ; receives envoys 
from Eadred, 286, note 2 ; his wars 
with Harald Blaatand, 309, 349 ; his 
alliance with Eadgar, 314, note 4; 
his death, 349. 

Owen, under-king of the North Welsh, 
submits to /Ethelstan, 211 ; present 
in his Witenagemots, 215 and note 
I ; in those of Eadred, 286. 

Oxford, earliest evidence for its ex- 
istence, 138, note r ; Alfred's mint 



at, 138 and note i, 421 ; foundation 
of St. Frideswide's, 419 ; bord'tr- 
town of the Mercian ealdormanry, 
119, 421; annexed to Wessex by 
Eadward the Elder, 188 ; its extent, 
421; its portmannimot, 420; its 
parishes, 420, 421 ; its traffic along 
Thames, 421; its dealings with 
Abingdon, 421 ; burned by Thur- 
kill,390; thegns slain at, 397 ; Ead- 
gar's law renewed at, 408; Wite- 
nagemots at, 397, 408, 462; Harald 
Harefoot dies at, 466. 
Oxfordshire, its origin, 228 ; its feorm, 
387, note 3 ; taken from Mercia and 
joined with Hereford, etc., 481 ; with 
East Anglia, 544. 



Pallig, brother-in-law of Swein, serves 
under yEthelred H., 367. 

Palnatoki, a noble of Fiinen, Swein 
brought up in his house, 350 ; gives 
Harald Blaatand his death-wound, 
351; seizes Jomsborg and founds 
a state there, 351. 

Papacy, rival claimants of, 496 ; its 
revival under Leo IX., 497. 

Paris sacked by the Wikings, 73 ; its 
defence against Hrolf, 233 ; duchy 
of, its creation, 233; policy of Charles 
the Simple towards, 234 ; dukes of, 
see Hugh, Odo, Robert. 

Parish, the, growth of, 13 ; its relation 
to the township, 14, 15 ; priest of, 
his dues, 13; supersedes the tun- 
reeve, 15. 

Patrick, St., the younger, his tomb at 
Glastonbury, 271, note 2. 

Paul, St., church and monastery in 
London, 435 ; portmannimot and 
muster of the citizens in its church- 
yard, 441, 7iote 3, 443. 

Pavia, birth-place of Lanfranc, 485. 

Peada, 38, note i. 

Pen, battle of, 400. 

Peter, chaplain to Eadward the Con- 
fessor, 526, 527. 

Peterborough sacked by Danes, 91 ; 
Chronicle of, 327, itote. 

Pevensey, Godwine and his sons at, 
504 ; William lands at, 549. 

Picts, the, spoiled by Halfdene, no; 
take Alchvyd, 263; rise of their 
kingdom, 177; its extinction, 178 ; 
name superseded by that of the 
Scots, 178 ; king of, see Kenneth. 

Pilgrimages, 15; their route, 17 ; their 



598 



INDEX. 



danger, 17, 18 ; their popularity, 18 ; 
efforts for their protection, 17; en- 
joined as penances, 18; their evil 
consequences, 18; pilgrimage of 
iEthelwulf, 77 ; of CeadwaJla, 16 ; 
of Ine, 16 ; of Mercian and East- 
Saxon kings, 16 ; of Cnut, 449 ; of 
Robert the Devil, 456; of S\vein,5i3. 

Plegmund, a Mercian, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, 150. 

Poetry, English, see Songs. 

Poitou, 489. 

Ponthieu, its relation to Flanders and 
Normandy, 255 ; war between Ar- 
nulf of Flanders and William Long- 
sword in, 255 ; subject to William 
the Conqueror, 533; Harold wrecked 
at, 547; counts of, see Guy, Herlwin, 
Ingelram. 

Popes, see Alexander, John, Leo, Nico- 
las. 

Porlock, Harold at, 5 14. 

Portmannimot of Oxford, 420 ; of 
London, 443 ; the " busting," 446. 

Port-reeve of London, 443. 

" Primarius," 275 and note 4. 

Progresses, royal, 31 ; their effects in 
creating the great officers of the 
household, 32 ; on the system of 
justice, 32 ; their extension under 
Eadgar, 335 ; under Cnut, 409. 

Pucklechurch, Eadmund slain at, 269. 



Races, mixture of, in Britain, 3 ; its re- 
sults. 3, 4. 

Ragnald, King of Northumbria, 262, 
note ; under-king of Deira, 277. 

Ralf of Mantes, nephew of Eadward 
the Confessor, 474 ; strife of his fol- 
lowers with the English, 508 ; joins 
Eadward against Godwine, 509 ; re- 
ceives part of Swein's earldom, 511 ; 
his forces routed by vElfgar and 
Gruffydd, 544 ; his death, 544. 

Ralf of Wacey, 471. 

Ralf of Toesny, 533. 

Ramsbury, bishops of, see Hermann, 
Odo. 

Ramsey, Cnut's gifts to, 416; Wyth- 
nrann Abbot of, 525. 

Randolf of Bayeux, 486. 

Rapes of Sussex, 222. 

Reading, Danes at, 94, 97, 98. 

Rechru, 63, note 4. 

Reeve, the king's, his duties, 229 ; see 
High-reeve, Wic-reeve, Shire-reeve, 
Port-reeve, Tun-reeve. 



Reginbokl, Chancellor, 527. 

Repton, burial-place of the Mercian 
kings, loi ; Danes winter at, loi. 

Revenue, the royal, its distribution 
under Alfred, 174; its sources, 387, 
7iote 3. 

Rheims, Council of, 500; its political 
results, 501, 502. 

Richard the Fearless, son and succes- 
sor of William Longsword, 261 ; 
reared in the Bessin, 372 ; his ac- 
cession followed by a civil war, 262 ; 
his alliance with Harald Blaatand., 
348 ; Normandy under him, 309, 373, 
374 ; treaty with ^thelred, 361, 362, 
71 ate. 

Richard the Gooc, son of Richard the 
Fearless, 375 ; his alliance with 
^thelred, 376; gives a refuge to 
^thelred and his house, 395. 

Richard IH., son and successor of 
Richard the Good, 455 ; betrothed 
to Adela of France, 502. 

Richard, son of Scrob, 474. 

Richmondshire, 221. 

Ricsig, King of Northumbria, 1 10 ; his 
death, no. 

Ridings, see Trithings. 

Ripon, Wilfrid's abbey at, destroyed 
by the Danes, 89 ; the church de- 
stroyed by Eadred, 89, 7tote I, 279; 
^thelstan's grants to, 213. 

Riponshire, 221. 

Roads, their dangers in the tenth cen- 
tury, 323 ; Roman, see Watling 
Street, Fosse, Icknield. 

Robert the Devil succeeds Richard 
IH. as Duke of Normandy, 455 ; 
subdues Brittany, 455 ; restores 
King Henry of France, 455 ; sup- 
ports Baldwin of Flanders, 455 ; 
prepares to invade England, 456 ; 
his fleet wrecked, 456 ; names Will- 
iam as his successor, 457; pilgrim 
to the Holy Land, 456 ; his death, 

457- , , 

Robert, Abbot of Jumieges, chaplam 
of Eadward the Confessor, 474, 526, 
527 ; his influence over the king, 
482; made Bishop of London, 482, 
527; Archbishop of Canterbury, 506; 
his quarrel with Godwine, 507 ; his 
visit to William, 512, 7iote ; his flight, 
515, 518; outlawed, 517; protests 
against Stigand's intrusion, 519, 
558 ; his deposition held invalid, 
519.558. 

Robert the Strong, Duke of Paris, 233. 



INDEX. 



599 



Rochester attacked by the Wikings, 
75, 142, 367 ; relieved by Alfred, 
142; mint at, 219; see of, its lands 
ravaged by order of ^thelred II., 
342, 343 ; bishops of, see Siward. 

Roderic Mawr, King of North Wales, 
pays tribute to Mercia, 77 ; alliance 
of his house with the Northmen, 
176; its submission to Alfred, 176. 

Rodward, Archbishop of York, 212, 
213, noU I ; his death, 213. 

Roeskilde, Harald Blaatand builds a 
church and castle at, 350 ; Cnut 
appoints an English bishop to, 416. 

Roger of Toesny, 404, 455. 

Rognwald, son of Harald Fair -hair, 
burned by Eric Bloody-axe, 252. 

Rollo,j^'^ Hrolf. 

Rome, /Elfred's visit to, 95 ; Alfred 
sends alms to, 100 and fiofe 2 ; his 
intercourse with, 175 ; Saxon school 
at, 19, 449. 

Romney secured by William, 551. 

Ross, Wikings in, 63, 207. 

Rouen sacked by the Wikings, 73 ; 
attacked by Hrolf, 234; loyal to 
William, 487. 

Rudolf of Burgundy claims the West- 
Frankish crown, 239 ; becomes king, 
240 ; defeats the Northmen of the 
Loire, 240; receives the homage of 
William Longsword, 241 ; his death, 

254- 
Runcorn fortified by .^thelflaed, 194, 



Saintes pillaged by the Wikings, 73. 

Salt-works in Dorset, 7 and 7io/e ; 
Cheshire, 7, Jiofe ; Worcestershire, 
322 ; Kent, 322 and fioU i. 

Sandwich, raid of the Wikings on, 75 ; 
its early importance as a seaport, 
74 and fiote 2 ; yEthelred's fleet as- 
sembles at, 386, 428, fioie I ; Swein 
lands at, 393 ; becomes the main 
port of the Channel, 428; its " but- 
secarls," 428 and noU I ; its ferry- 
dues and port-tolls granted by Cnut 
to Christ - Church, Canterbury, 428 
and 7!0^e 2 ; seized by Harald Hare- 
foot, 429 and fzo(e i ; its possession 
disputed between Christ-Church and 
St. Augustine's, 429 ; its herring 
fisheries, 429 ; Harthacnut lands at, 
466; Eadvvard gathers a fleet at, 

483, 503. 514- 
Saxony, duchy of, attacked by Harald 
Blaatand, 349. 



Scale How, 265. 

Scandinavia, its dependent position 
under Cnut, 407 ; supplies iron to 
Britain, 430; see Danes, Northmen, 
Norwegians, Swedes, Wikings. 
Scargate fortified by ^thelflzed, 190. 
Schools, see Abingdon, Alfred, Bee, 
Glastonbury, Rome, Winchester, 
Worcester, York. 

Scots subject to Uie Picts, 177; their 
name supersedes that of Picts, 178; 
join a league against ^Ethelstan, 
211,243; defeated at Biunanburh, 
244 ; their alliance with Eadred, 
277; invade Northumbria, 417 ; de- 
feated at Durham, 383, 452; king- 
dom of, attacked by the Ostmen, 
87 ; by Thorstein and Sigurd, 102 ; 
its extent in the time of Alfred, 
177; its alliance with him, 178; its 
danger from the Northmen, 206, 
207 ; its relations with Eadgar, 311 ; 
its acquisition of Edinburgh, 311, 
451; of Lothian, 452; its altered 
relations to England, 452, 453 ; its 
decline under Duncan, 538 ; Nor- 
man refugees from England in, 538 ; 
invaded by Siward, 538; the aethel- 
ing Eadgar takes refuge in, 554, 
556 ; kings of, see Constantine, Dun- 
can, Kenneth, Macbeth, Malcolm. 

Seal, its use under Eadward, 468, 476, 
note. 

" Secundarius," 82, vote i; office held 
by Alfred, 82, note i, 96; by God- 
wine, 412 ; instituted by Cnut, 476, 
note ; continued under the Confes- 
sor, 476, note ; its use, 524. 

Selsey, bishops of, see iEthelric, Heca. 

Selwood, the thegns of Wessex con- 
spire at, 80 ; boundary of East and 
West Wessex, 224. 

" Selwoodshire," the diocese of Eald- 
helm, 222, note i. 

Semland, 278, 348. 

Senlac, battle of, 549-551. 

Serf, see Villein. 

Seterington, Carl's son slain at, 47S, 
note. 

Seven Boroughs, two chief thegns of, 
slain by Eadric at Oxford, 397. 

Severn, river, fisheries in, 422 and note 
2 ; lead-works in valley of, 322. 

Shaftesbury, abbey founded by ^Elfred 
at, 127; mint at, 219; Eadward the 
Martyr buried at, 342. 

Sherborne, see of, 45 ; bishops of, sec 
Ealdhclm, Ealhstan. 



6oo 



INDEX. 



Sherstone, battle of, 400. 

Sheppey ravaged by the Wikings, 62 ; 
they winter in, 76, 77 ; the Danes in 
Kent driven thither by Eadmund 
Ironside, 400. 

Shetland, Wikings in, 63, 163 ; ex- 
pelled by Harald Fair-hair, 163. 

Ship-money, 387, note 3. 

Ships of the Wikings, 56, 57 and notes, 
84, note I. 

Shires, their West-Saxon origin, 135, 
note 5, 222 ; uses of the word, 222, 
223 ; instances of shires in Corn- 
wall, Kent, Sussex, Yorkshire, 222, 
223; in York, 221, 433, «c>/^ i, 442, 
note 3 ; later shires preserve the ad- 
ministrative forms of the "folk," 

222 ; first named in the laws of Ine, 

223 ; use of the word by Asser and 
iElfred, 224, note ; early formation 
in Wessex, 222-224; Hampshire 
and Wiltshire, 223 ; difference in 
names of earlier and later shires, 
225 ; extended to the eastern de- 
pendencies of Wessex, 225 ; estab- 
lished throughout Wessex by iEthel- 
stan's time, 225 and note 2 ; their 
introduction into Mercia, 225-227 ; 
into the Danelaw, 227 ; their late 
introduction into East Anglia and 
the north, 228, note ; organization 
of the whole kingdom in, its date, 
7.2%, note; difference of their organ- 
ization in Wessex and in Mid-Brit- 
ain, 228, 229: sums due to the king 
from, 229 ; financial use of the sys- 
tem, 229. 

Shire-man, see Shire-reeve. 

Shire-moot the sheriff's court, 230. 

Shire-reeve, his office and duties, 223, 
230 ; his importance in the shire- 
moot, 230, note 2 ; growth of his au- 
thority, 230; its executive character, 
230, note 3. 

Shoebury, Wikings encamp at, 165. 

Shrewsbury, castle at, 554. 

Shropshire, 227. 

Sidroc the Old and Sidroc the Young, 
jarls, join Guthrum, 93 ; slain at 
Ashdown, 93, note i. 

Sigenc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
negotiates a treaty with the Nor- 
wegians, 360, note I ; position in the 
councils of /Ethelred, 411. 

Sigurd, Jarl of Orkneys, 102. 

Sigwald, Jarl at Jomsborg, 353, 390 ; 
his vow at Harald Blaatand's funer- 
al feast, 3^3. 



Sihtric, King of Dublin, driven out, 
becomes King at York, 233 ; mar- 
ries a sister of ^thelstan, 210 ; his 
death, 211. 

Silver How, 265. 

Silverside, 265. 

Sivvard becomes Earl ofNorthunibria, 
469, 476 ; of Nottingham, North- 
ampton and Huntingdon, 518; his 
independent position, 474 ; his char- 
acter, 477 ; his surname of " Digera," 
477 ; slays Eadwulf, 477 and note 2 ; 
marries Ealdred's daughter, 477 ; 
joins the king against Godwine, 
509 ; his influence, 537 ; Duncan's 
sons take refuge with him, 538 ; in- 
vades Scotland, 539; establishes 
Malcolm as its king, 539 ; his death, 
540; his burial-place, 434, 540. 

Siward, Bishop of Rochester, 558. 

Sivvard, descendant of Earl Uhtred, 
revolts against Tostig, 541, note 2. 

Skeggles Water, 265. 

Skiringsal, centre of northern trade, 
1 13, note 3. 

Slaves, the English,, answer to the 
Scandinavian thralls, 55 ; tolls on 
the sale of, 319; efforts of the 
Church in their behalf, 320 ; ^thel- 
stan's reform, 320 ; not bound to 
work on Sundays, 320 ; allowed to 
purchase their freedom, 320 and note 
3 ; forms of manumission and eman- 
cipation, 321 ; enactment of the 
Synod of Chelsea concerning, 321. 

Slave-trade among the Danes, 113 and 
note 4; at Chester, 426; Bristol, 
427; London, 438; vain attempts 
to abolish, 427. 

Sleswick, 60. 

Sokes, growth of, 29 ; the soke a priv- 
ilege of the thegn, 129. 

Somerset, origin of its name, 225 ; vic- 
tory of its fyrd at the Parret, 72 ; 
Eadmund Ironside raises troops in, 
399 ; detached from Wessex and 
joined with Hereford, etc., under 
Swein, 481 ; ealdonnen of, 224, note ; 
see ^thelnoth. 

Somerton, 225. 

Songs, national, preserved among the 
gleemen, 324 ; by William of 
Malmesbury, 284, note 2 ; in the 
Chronicle, 209, note 4, 243, note 3, 
326 ; Northumbrian songs preserved 
in West- Saxon versions, 285. 

Southampton gives its name to Hamp- 
shire, 222 ; mint at, 219 ; Swein and 



INDEX. 



60 1 



Olaf winter at, 365 ; Eadward the 
Confessor makes an unsuccessful 
descent at, 462 ; ealdormanry of, see 
Wessex (Central). 
Southwark, Godwine encamps at, 510 ; 

burned by William, 552. 
Spearhafoc, Bishop of London, 507 ; 
liis appointment quashed by the 
Pope, 507 ; withdraws, 518. 
Stafford fortified by ^thelflaed, 192 ; 

gives its name to a shire, 226, 
Staffordshire, its origin, 226. 
Staller, or constable, his office, 523. 
Stamford, one of the Five Boroughs, 
116, 197 ; its lawmen, 117, 442, note 
3 ; fortified by Eadward the Elder, 
197. 
Stamford Bridge, battle of, 549. 
Stigand, Priest of Assandun, 525, 557 ; 
chaplain to Cnut, 557 ; to Harald 
Harefoot, 525, 557; first nomina- 
tion to a bishopric, 557 ; Bishop of 
Elmham, 557 ; friend of Emma, 557; 
supports Godwine, 510, 516; de- 
posed and restored, 557 ; Bishop of 
Winchester, 558 ; Archbishop of 
Canterbury, 519, 558; his uncanon- 
ical position, 519; holds both sees, 
558; his wealth, 558; gets a pallium, 
548, 558 ; consecrates two bishops, 
558 ; feeling against him in Nor- 
mandy, 519; at Rome, 558; in Eng- 
land, 558-560 ; Wulfstan's repudia- 
tion of him, 559 ; present at Ead- 
ward's death, 560. 
Strath -Clyde ravaged by Halfdene, 
102 and note 2, 1 10 ; set free by the 
wreck of Northumbria, 176; joins 
the northern league against Ead- 
ward, 208 ; submits to him, 208, 
note; its border extended to the 
Derwent, 266; the name replaced 
by Cumbria, 176, 266. 
Streoneshealh destroyed by Danes, 

88; replaced by Whitby, 89. 
Strut-Harald, Jarl of Zeeland, 352, 

390- 

Style, royal, of Eadward the Elder, 
184 ; of ^thelstan, 231, 257, note 3 ; 
of Eadmund, 257, note 3 ; of Eadred, 
275, note 2, 276, note 2, 287 ; of Ead- 
gar, 2,00, note, 301 and 7tote 2. 

Suffolk, 228, note. 

Surrey forms part of the " Eastern 
Kingdom," 66 ; its fyrd defeated by 
the Wikings inThanet, 76 ; attacked 
by the Danes, 99 ; earldormen of, 
22/^note; becomes a shire, 225; sup- 



ports Godwine, 513, «(?/£' 2; joined 
with Essex, etc., under Leofwine, 

544- 

Sussex forms part of the " Eastern 
Kingdom," 66 ; its rapes, 222 ; be- 
comes a shire of the West-Saxon 
realm, 225 ; its coast harried by 
Child Wulfnoth the South Saxon, 
390 and 7tote i ; supports Godwine, 
513, note 2; kings of, their extinc- 
tion, 38, note I. 

Sutherland, Wikings in, 63, 207. 

Sweden, its beginnings, 51 and tiote, 
60 ; settlement of the Danes in, 85 ; 
kings of, see Eric, Olaf. 

Svvein,son of Harald Blaatand, legends 
of his childhood, 350 ; heads resist- 
ance to Blaatand, 350, 351, 7iote i ; 
his baptism, 350, note l ; exiled by 
his father, 351 ; succeeds liim as 
king, 351 ; restores heathenism, 351 ; 
struggle with Jomsborgers, 352 and 
7wte I ; his marriage, 352, 7iote i ; his 
vow at Harald's burial -feast, 352, 
353 ; driven from Denmark, 353 ; 
his Wiking life, 353 ; joined by Olaf 
Tryggvason in an invasion of Eng- 
land, 364; lands at Southampton, 
364 ; repulsed from London, 364 
and note i ; treaty with ^thelred, 
365 ; withdraws from England, 365 ; 
recalled to Denmark, 368 ; wars 
with Olaf of Sweden, 368; marries 
Olaf's mother, 368 ; his victory over 
Olaf Tryggvason, 368, 370; again 
attacks England, 380 ; lands at Ex- 
eter, 380 ; met by fyrds of Wiltshire 
and Hampshire, 380; invades East 
Anglia, 381 ; breaks truce with Ulf- 
cytel and plunders Thetford, 381 ; 
defeats the East Anglians, 381 ; re- 
turns to Denmark, 382 ; sends Thur- 
kill to attack England, 390 ; lands 
at Sandwich, 393 ; enters the Hum- 
ber, 393 ; joined by the Danelaw, 
393 ; marches into Wessex, 394 ; 
receives the submission of Winches- 
ter, 394; repulsed from London, 
394 ; receives the submission of 
West Wessex, 394 ; receives host- 
ages from London, 394 ; his death, 

395- 
Swein, son of Cnut, 404 ; driven from 

Norway, 458 ; his death, 458. 
Swein Estrithson claims the crown of 

Denmark, 469 ; of England, 469 ; 

Eadward's alleged promise to, 470 ; 

his struggle with Magnus, 475, 483 ; 



602 



INDEX. 



sails to England, 554 ; bought off 
by William, 554. 

Swein, son of Godwine, 461 ; Earl of 
Hereford, etc., 481 ; carries off the 
Abbess of Leominster, 483 ; out- 
lawed, 483 ; his restoration opposed 
by Harold and Beorn, 504 ; murders 
Beorn, 504; branded as "nithing" 
and outlawed, 504; restored, 505; 
flies to Flanders, 510; his earldom 
divided, 511; his pilgrimage and 
death, 513. 

Swithiod, kingdom of, 60. 

Swithun, St., Bishop of Winchester, 
70 ; his fidelity to ^thelwulf, 80 ; 
his historical work, 158, 159 and note 
2 ; church in London dedicated to, 
444, note. 

Taddenescylf, 277. 
Taillefer at Senlac, 530. 

Tamar, river, boundary of West Wales, 
64, 212. 

Tamworth, residence of the Mercian 
kings, 44, 192, 226 ; fortified by 
^thelflaed, 192; stormed by the 
Ostmen, 260. 

Taxation, national, under .^thelred 
II., 387, note 3 ; ship - levy and 
Danegeld, 388, note ; of London un- 
der Cnut, 447. 

Tempsford, Danes encamp at, 196; 
taken by the English, 196. 

Teowdor, under -king of the North 
Welsh, 215, «^/^ I. 

Thames, river, the Danes sail up, 93 ; 
its lower valley annexed to Wessex, 
188; boundary between the realms 
of Eadwig and Eadgar, 301 and 
note I. 

Thanet, victory of the Wikings in, 76 ; 
ravaged by Eadgar, 335. 

Thegns, origin of, 34; displace the 
sethelings, 34 ; their relation to the 
king, 35 ; growth of the class, 129 ; 
its extension under TElfred, 130 ; 
three classes of, 129 ; their wealth 
and luxury, 322 ; their share in tax- 
ation, 387, note I. 

Thelwell, Eadward the Elder at, 205. 

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
320. 

Theodred, Bishop of the "Lunden- 
wara," 441, note 3. 

Theow, see Slave. 

Thetford, Ivar and Hubba winter at, 
91 ; plundered by the Danes, 381. 

" Thing " corresponds to " moot," 55 ; 



replaces it, 115; survival of the 
word at Thingwall, 11.2, note 2. 

Thored, Gunnar's son, 314, note i ; 
'harries Westmoringa-land, 263, note 
2, 314, note I. 

Thored, Ealdorman, 357, note i ; lead- 
er of the fyrcl with ^felfric, 361. 

Thorgils, leader of the Wikings, 64 
and note i ; settles in Ulster, 71 ; 
destroys Armagh, 71 ; slain, 72. 

Thorstein, son of Olaf the Fair, invades 
the Scot kingdom, 102. 

"Thrall," 55. 

Thunresfeld, Witenagemot at, 216 and 
note 2, 225, note 2. 

Thurbrand, 478, Jiote. 

Thurcytel, Jarl, holds Buckingham, 
195 ; submits to Eadward the Elder, 
195, 203. 

Thurferth, Jarl, of Northampton, sub- 
mits to Eadward the Elder, 196, 203. 

Thurkill, son of Strut-Harald of Zee- 
land, 390 ; sent to England by Swein, 
390; his ravages, 391 ; defeats the 
East-Anglian fyrd, 391 ; bought off 
by .^thelred, 392 ; sacks Canter- 
bury and seizes Archbishop NA^- 
heah, 392 ; enters vEthelred's ser- 
vice as a mercenary, 392 ; defends 
London against Swein, 394; rejoins 
the Danes, 396; makes peace be- 
tween Harald and Cnut, 396 ; Eal- 
dorman of East Anglia, 403 ; ban- 
ished, 407. 

"Thwaite" in place-names, 111,265, 
note 2. 

Thyra, wife of Gorm the Old, 348. 

Tithes, their institution, 13 and note 3, 
77, note. 

" Toft " in place-names, 265, note 2. 

Tolls on the sale of slaves, 320 ; at 
Lewes, 320 ; on herrings at Abing- 
don, 421 ; at Sandwich, 429, note i. 

" Ton " in place-names, 265, note 2. 

Torksey, Danes encamp at, loi ; its 
trading importance, 421. 

Tostig, son of Godwine, marries Judith 
of Flanders, 504; flies with Godwine 
to Flanders, 510; Eadward's favor 
to, 534; visits Pope Nicolas, 546, 
7iote I, 558 ; Earl of Northumbria, 
540 ; . his character, 541 ; his stern 
justice, 541 and note 2 ; becomes the 
sworn brother of Malcolm, 543 ; ris- 
ing of Northumbria against him, 547; 
its leaders, 541, note 2 ; goes to Flan- 
ders, 547 ; goes to Norway and joins 
Harald Hardrada in an invasion of 



INDEX. 



603 



England, 549; engages "butsecarls" 
at Sandwich, 428, note I ; his over- 
throw at Stamford Bridge, 549. 

Tottenhale, Danes defeated at, 187. 

Toulouse, Wikings at, 73. 

Touraine conquered by the counts of 
Anjou, 489. 

Towcester fortified by Eadward the 
Elder, 196 ; attacked by Danes, 195. 

Township, the, its relation to the par- 
ish, 14, 15. 

Trade, ^thelstan's regulations con- 
cerning, 218; inland trade in the 
tenth century, 321-323, 419-426 ; 
development of external trade, 423 
et seq.; impulse given by the Danes, 
423 ; trade on the east coast, 429 ; 
of the Northmen, 430 ; of London, 
445 ; of Flanders, 492, 493 ; between 
England and Flanders, 498. 

Trithings in Deira, 1 15 ; their divisions, 
115 ; in Lincolnshire, 1 1 7. 

Treasurer, see Hordere. 

Treasury, see Hoard. 

Truce of God, 471. 

Tun-moot, the, its place of meeting, 15 ; 
survival in parish vestry, 16. 

Tun-reeve, the, superseded by the par- 
ish priest, 14. 

Tunsberg, its trade, 431, vote. 

Tynemouth, burning of, 88. 

U 

Ufegeat blinded, 382, note. 

Uhtred, son of Waltheof, made Earl 
of Northumbria, 382 ; defeats the 
Scots, 382, 452 ; his marriages, 383, 

477, note 2 ; joins Swein, 393 ; joins 
Eadmund, 398 ; submits to Cnut, 
398, 478, note ; his feud with Thur- 
brand, 478, 7!ote; murdered, 400,403, 

478, note. 

Ulf, his marriage with Estrith, 408 ; 
ruler of Denmark, 407, 408 ; guar- 
dian of Harthacnut, 448. 

Ulf, Norman chaplain of Eadward, 
474, 526, 527 ; Bishop of Dorches- 
ter, 491, 526, 527 ; his flight, 515. 

Ulf, son of Dolfin, 541, note 2. 

Ulfcytel, ruler in East Anglia, 378, 
note 1, 381 ; his northern blood, 381 ; 
independence of East Anglia under 
him, 381 ; defeated by Swein, 382 ; 
by Thurkill, 391 ; joins Eadmund, 
400; slain at Assandun, 401. 

Ulster, Wikings in, 71. 

Ulverston, 265. 

" Unrsedig," ^thelred the, 356. 



V 

Val-es-Dunes, battle of, 488. 
Varangians, the, English among, 553. 
Vermandois, counts of, 241. 
Vestry, parish, 14. 
Villeins, their tenure, 316 ; degrees of 

their social rank, 317, 72ote 2; free 

socially though not politically, 319 ; 

the free ceorls gradually degraded 

into, 345. 
" Vinheidi," 244, note. 

W 

Walbrook, 438. 

Wales, North, see Welsh. 

Walter, a Lotharingian, 527 ; chaplain 
to Eadgylh, 528 ; Bishop of Here- 
ford, 528 ; consecrated at Rome, 558. 

Waltham, Harold's church at, 558. 

Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, 340. 

Waltheof, Earl of Bernicia, 357, 382. 

Waltheof, son of Siward, 540 ; joins 
the revolt against Tostig, 542, note; 
legends of his exploits, 542, note ; 
avenges Ealdred's death, 478, note. 

Wantage, 94 and Jiote 2. 

Wapentake, meaning and origin of the 
word, 115; its use in Lincolnshire, 
H7. 

Warbury, ^thelflaed at, 194. 

Wardour, story of .Alfred at, 168. 

Wareham, shire-town of Dorset, 428 ; 
Guthrum encamps near, 103 ; mint 
at, 219 ; Eadward the Martyr buried 
at, 341. 

Warwick, its origin, 193; fortified by 
^thelflaed, 193 ; gives its name to a 
shire, 226 ; its feorm, 388, note. 

Warwickshire, its origin, 226. 

Waterford founded by Wikings, 71. 

Watling Street, 191, 7iote 1 ; origin of 
name, 191 and note 2; seized by 
/Ethelflffid, 190. 

Wealh-cyn, 2, 72. 

Wearmouth, burning of, 49. 

Wedmore, peace of, 107 ; its effect on 
Europe, 108; on the Danes, 146; on 
the English, 146, 147. 

Weile, burial-mounds near, 348. 

Weland the Wiking, 81, note 3. 

Wells, bishops of, see Duduc. 

Welsh, North, their relation to Mercia, 
43 ; revolt against it, 77 ; their alli- 
ance with the Danes, 165 ; become 
subject to Alfred, 176; to Eadward 
the Elder, 200, 7iote ; to .•Ethelstan, 
211; kings of, present in ^thelstan's 



6o4 



INDEX. 



Witenagemots, 215 and notes ; Ead- 
gar's relations with, 310 ; united 
under Meredydd, 359 ; at war with 
Mercia, 392 ; rising of, suppressed 
by Cnut,45o; Gruffydd ap Llewelyn's 
power, 475, 543 ; league of Gruffydd 
and ^Ifgar, 544 ; revolt against the 
Normans, 553 ; kings of, see Cledauc, 
Eugenius, Gruffydd, Howel, Jeoth- 
wel, Judwal, Llewelyn, Meredydd, 
Morcant, Owen, Roderic, Teowdor, 
Wurgeat. 

Welsh, West, provisions concerning 
them in Ine's law, 21 ; rise against 
Ecgberht, 64; defeated at Hengest- 
dun, 64, 65 ; revolt against .iElfred, 
165 ; subdued by ^thelstan, 211,212. 

Wends, raids on Jutland, 85, ncte ; 
kings of, see Burislaf. 

" Wendune," or " Weondune," 244, 
note, 

" Wer," assessed in coin in the laws 
of Jithelberht, 218. 

Werburgh, St., church of, at Chester, 
186, 423, fiote. 

Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, his 
school, 149; literary work, 149, 168; 
possible share in the Worcester 
Chronicle, 183, ncte 3. 

Wervvulf, chaplain to Wilfred, 150. 

Wessex, earliest written law in, 20 ; its 
military strength, 44 ; its geographi- 
cal advantages, 44, 45 ; its varied 
composition, 45, 65, 66; its extension 
west of Selwood, 224 ; its adminis- 
trative order, 46; its connection with 
the "Eastern Kingdom," 66; its mil- 
itary organization, 66, 67 ; revolts 
against ..■Ethelwulf, 80 ; closer union 
with Kent, 82, note ; its isolation in 
face of the Danes, 93 ; surprised by 
them, 104; its exhaustion, 125; its 
revival under jElfred, 127 tt seq. ; 
decline of monasticism in, 170 and 
mote 1, 328; oath of allegiance to 
Eadward in, 202 ; change in its re- 
lations to northern Britain, 206 ; 
probable date of its shire organiza- 
tion, 224; extension of the shire-sys- 
tem to its eastern dependencies, 225; 
organization of its shires, 228, 229 ; 
foreign alliances of its kings, 239 ; 
source of the second old English 
literature, 285 ; its three divisions, 
302 ; its new organization under 
Eadgar, 303 ; ravaged by Thurkill, 
391 ; by Cnut, 397 ; submits to Cnut, 
398; made into an earldom, 410; 



adheres to Harthacnut, 461 ; accepts 
Harald as king, 465; kings of, see 
Alfred, ^Ethelbald, ^thelberht, 
^.thelred, ^tlielstan, ^thelwulf, 
Ceadwalla, Cenwalch, Eadgar, Ead- 
mund, Eadward, Eadwig, Ecgberht, 
Harthacnut, Ine ; earldom of, its ex- 
tent and importance, 480 ; altered 
position of the king in, 480; Somer- 
set and Berkshire detached from, 
481 ; earls of, see Godwine, Harold. 

Wessex, the original or Central, 44, 
222 ; later ealdormanry, 302, 303 ; 
submits to Swein, 394; ealdormen 
of, see /Elf heah, /Elfric, ^thelmaer. 

Wessex, Western, mixture of blood in 
its population, 45 ; its strong West- 
Saxon character, 45 ; ealdormanry 
of, 302, 303 ; submits to Swein, 394 ; 
ealdormen of, see /Ethelmser, .(Ethel- 
weard. 

Westfold, kingdom of, 60 ; kings of, 
see Biorn, Godfrid, Harald. 

Westminster, Harald Harefoot buried 
at, 466 ; home of Eadward the Con- 
fessor, 480 ; William crowned at, 
552- 

Westmoreland, 228, note. 

Westmoringa-land, the modern West- 
moreland, 266, note 2 ; colonized by 
Norwegians, 263 ; harried by Tho- 
red, 263, note 2 ; character of coun- 
try and people, 264; English fugi- 
tives in, 264. 

Whitby, Danish settlement, 89, iii. 

Whithern, English bishops of, 264 and 
note I ; see Badulf. 

Wic-reeve of London, 438, 443. 

Wight, extinction of its kings, 38, note 
I ; Wikings winter in, 366, 384 ; 
meeting of Godwine and Harold 
off, 514. 

Wiglaf, King of Mercia, deposed by 
Ecgberht, 47 ; restored, 47. 

Wigmore, Eadward the Elder at, 195. 

Wiheal, Uhtred slain at, 478, note. 

Wihtrsed, King of Kent, his laws, 9, 
20, notes I and 3. 

Wikings, the name, 54 and note 2 ; 
their two lines of attack, 59, 73 ; 
raids on South England, 72-77, 81, 
82 ; on Gaul, 73, 74 ; greed for booty 
rather than dominion, 83 ; impor- 
tance for them of Britain, 83 ; con- 
centration of their forces on it, 103; 
see Danes, Norwegians, Ostmen. 

Wilbarstone, 312. 

William Longsword, son of Hrolf, his 



INDEX. 



605 



policy, 237 ; his war witli Hugh the 
Great and the Bretons, 240, 241 ; 
conquers the Cotentin, 241 ; does 
homage to Rudolf of Burgundy, 
241 ; yEthelstan's negotiations with, 
254 ; his war with Arnulf of Flan- 
ders, 256 ; excommunicated, 256 ; 
leagues with Hugh and Arnulf 
against Lewis, 256 ; rejoins the Kar- 
olingian party, 261 ; alliance with 
Harald Blaatand, 348 ; revolt 
against, 372 ; murdered, 261. 
William, son of Robert the Devil, his 
birth, 457 ; appointed by Robert as 
his successor, 457 ; anarchy of his 
early years, 458 ; his boyhood, 472 ; 
his temper, 472 ; his counsellors, 
485; revolt against him, 4S7; his 
escape, 487 ; seeks aid of the P^-ench 
king, 487 ; Val-es-Dunes, 48S; helps 
King Henry against Geoffrey of 
Anjou,490; his vengeance on Alen- 
9on,490 ; wins Domfront,4go; seeks 
the hand of Matilda of Flanders, 
498 ; the marriage forbidden, 502 ; 
visits England, 512; alleged prom- 
ises of the Crown to, 473, 512 and 
vote; marries Matildi, 531 ; threat- 
ened with excommunication, 531 ; 
his quarrel and reconciliation with 
Lanfranc, 531 ; revolts against, 532 ; 
attacked by France and Anjou, 532 ; 
his plan of defence, 532 ; its success, 
533 ; Harold's oath to, 547 ; his 
claim against Harold, 547 ; lands at 
Pevensey, 549 ; his exploits at Sen- 
lac, 550 ; his victory, 551 ; advance 
over southern England, 551 ; Lon- 
don submits to, 552 ; his crowning, 
552; founds the Tower, 552; his 
charter to London, 553 ; his rule, 
553 ; returns to Normandy, 553 ; 
takes Exeter, 553 ; subdues the 
north, 553 ; occupies York, 554 ; 
Eadwine and Morkere submit to, 
553 ; general rising against, 554 ; 
his vow of vengeance on the north, 
554; buys off the Danes, 554; re- 
lieves Shrewsbury, 554; ravages 
Northumbria, 555 ; his march to 
Chester, 555 ; last revolt against, 
556 ; Ely surrendered to, 556 ; re- 
ceives the fealty of Malcolm, 556. 

William, a Norman priest, chaplain to 
Eadward the Confessor, 474, 526, 
527; made Bishop of London, 518, 
526, 527. 

William of Arques, 532. 



William of Eu, 532. 

William Fitz-Osbern, friend of Will- 
iam the Conqueror, 485 ; left as re- 
gent in England, 553; relieves Ex- 
eter, 554. 

Wilssetan, bishops of, see Ramsbury ; 
ealdormen of, 224, note. 

Wilton gives its name to Wiltshire, 
223 ; victory of the Danes at, loo. 

Wiltshire, origin of its name, 223 ; 
" Wiltun-scire," 224, note; its rela- 
tion to Hampshire, 224, note; Swein 
marches into, 380; plundered by 
Thurkill, 391 ; war against Cnut in, 

399- 

Winchanheale, 39. 

Winchester, centre of the older Wes- 
sex, 44 ; advantages of its position, 
44 ; raid of the Wikings on, 81 ; its 
abbey, 127; its mint, 219; ^Ethel- 
wold's school at, 325 ; clerks sup- 
planted by monks in its cathedral 
church, 330; the royal Hoard in, 
387, note I ; submits to Swein, 394 ; 
dwelling-place of Emma after Cnut's 
death, 462, 463 ; Eadward the Con- 
fessor crowned at, 468 ; surrendered 
to William, 552 ; Witenagemots at, 
213, note I, 215, note I ; bishops of, 
see TElfheah, ^Ethelwold, Denewulf, 
Stigand, Swithun ; Chronicle of, its 
origin, 157-159; its account of the 
reign of Eaclward the Elder, 181, 
note, 183, note 3 ; its character dur- 
ing the reign of ^thelstan, 21 1, note 
3 ; its last continuation possibly due 
to Bishop j^thelwold, 326. 

Wimborne, ^thelred I. buried at, 100. 

Wini buys see of London, 437, note i. 

Wirral, northern settlers in, 265. 

Witenagemot, the, changes in its char- 
acter, 35, 36 and note i ; not a rep- 
resentative of the nation, 37 and note 
I ; a royal council named by the 
king, 37 and note 2 ; its composition 
under ^thelstan, 212, 213, note i, 
215 and notes; its rights, 215, 216 ; 
its work in restoring public order, 
216 ; at Eadred's crowning, its na- 
tional character, 275 and note 2 ; 
presence of northern jarls and 
Welsh princes in, under Eadred, 
286 ; increasing importance of the 
ealdormen in, 292 ; its measures of 
defence against the Danes, 385, 389, 
391,392 ; recalls /Ethelred n.,395 ; 
assembled by Cnut to sanction his 
election as king, 408 ; chooses Har- 



6o6 



INDEX. 



aid for king, 462 ; tries and acquits 
Godwine, 464 ; chooses Harthacnut 
for king, 465 ; rejects Godwine's 
proposal to help Swein Estrithson, 
483; Godwine outlawed by, 510; 
Godwine restored and the " French- 
men" outlawed by, 515, 516; ^Ifgar 
outlawed by, 544 ; of Kent, petitions 
^thelstan to enforce justice, 29 ; of 
Mercia and Wessex, divides the 
realm between Eadwig and Eadgar, 
301, note I ; of Wessex, banishes 
Emma, 465, 557 ; deposes Stigand, 
557 ; forsakes Harthacnut and 
chooses Harald as king, 466 ; Wit- 
enagemot at Calne, 338 ; Colches- 
ter, 213, note I, 215, note 2 ; Exeter, 
216 and note 2, 218 ; Feversham, 216 
and note 2 ; Frome, 215, note i, 242, 
note 3; Greatley, 216 and note 2; 
Kirtlington, 338; Lewton, 213, note 
I, 215, notes ; London, 408, 509, 515 ; 
Middleton, 213, note i, 215, note 2; 
Oxford, 397, 408, 462 ; Thunresfeld, 
216 and 7tote 2, 225, note 2 ; Win- 
chester, 213, note I, 215, 7iote i ; 
Worcester, 559 ; York, 213, 7iote i. 

Witch drowned at London Bridge, 11, 
441, 7tote I. 

Witchcraft, decrees against, 10, li. 

Witham, Eadward the Elder at, 189. 

Worcester, Bishop Werfrith's school 
at, 150; becomes the centre of Eng- 
lish historicalliterature, 327; its im- 
portance, 423 ; resistance to Har- 
thacnut's Danegeld at, 467 ; see of, 
annexed to that of York, 333 ; bish- 
ops of, see Aldulf, Dunstan, Ealdied, 
Werfrith ; first or lost Chronicle of, 
its origin and composition, 183, 7iote 
3, 327 and 7wte ; preserved in the 
Peterborough Chronicle, 327, 7iote, 
355, 7tote I ; its influence on the later 
historians, 328; its importance, 328 
and 7iote ; its character in reign of 
^thelred II., 355, 7wte ; extant 
Chronicle of, its date, 327, 7iote ; 
Witenagemot at, 559. 

Worcestershire, 226 ; salt-works in, 
321 ; severed from Mercia, 479 ; 
joined with Gloucester under Odda, 

517- 

"Worth" in place-names, 265, 7iote i. 

Wreckage in Thanet punished by Ead- 
gar, 335 ; rights of, at Sandwich, 
428, 7tote 2. 

Writ, the king's, 525. 

Writing, introduction of, 19. 



Wulfeah blinded, 382, 7iote. 

Wulfgar, Ealdorman, counsellor of the 
crown under Eadmund, 275. 

Wulfgeat made high reeve, 382 ; de- 
prived, 382 and note. 

Wulf heard, Ealdorman of Hampton- 
shire, defeats the Wikings, 72 and 
7 1 ate I. 

Wulfhere, King of Mercia, sells the 
see of London to Wini, 437, 7iote i. 

Wulfhere, an English ealdorman, de- 
serts to the Danes, 140, 7iote 2. 

Wulfnoth, Child, the South -Saxon, 
390 and 7iote i. 

Wuifstan, St., Prior of Worcester, 559 ; 
made Bishop of Worcester, 559 ; 
consecrated by Ealdred, 559 ; his 
repudiation of Stigand, 559. 

Wuifstan, Archbishop of York, 213 ; 
present in ^thelstan's Witenage- 
mots, 213, 7tole I, 242, 7iote 3 , 260; 
his influence in the north, 260 ; his 
policy, 260 ; mediates between Ead- 
mund and the Danes, 260 ; joins the 
Danish party under Olaf, 260 ; ac- 
companies Olaf and his host into 
Mid-Britain, 260 ; helps to negotiate 
a peace between Eadmund and Olaf, 
260; returns to court, 268; swears 
allegiance to Eadred, 277 ; breaks 
his oath, 277 ; present at Eadred's 
court, 277, 7iote 3, 280, 7iote i ; arrest- 
ed, 280; released, 2S0, 7iote 2. 

Wuifstan, his voyage up the Baltic, 
172; Alfred's comment on it, 59, 
7iote, 172; his account of Denmark, 
347, 7iote. 

Wulfwig, chancellor to Eadward the 
Confessor, 526; made Bishop of Dor- 
chester, 527 ; his consecration, 558. 

Wurgeat, under - king of the North 
Welsh, 215, 7iote i. 

Wye, river, boundary between Welsh 
and. English, 211, 212; fisheries in, 
422, 7iote 2. 

Wythniann, German chaplain of Cnut, 
made Abbot of Ramsey, 525. 



York, Alcuin born at, 40 ; its school, 
41 and 7iote ; seized by thi Danes, 
87 ; its defences, 87 and 7iote 4; vic- 
tory of the Danes at, 88 and 7iote i ; 
the minster rebuilt, 41 ; disappear- 
ance of its library and school at the 
Danish conquest, 89 ; Danes winter 
at, 91 ; traces of Danish settlement 
in its local names, 114; capital of 



INDEX. 



607 



Danish North umbria, 115, 117; sub- 
mits to ^thelflaed, 198 and note 3 ; 
Witenagemot at, 212, 7iote 3 ; zEtli- 
elstan receives the West-Frankish 
envoys at, 254; submits to Cnut, 
398; its trade, 114, 432, 434 and 
7iote ; Roman remains at, in Dun- 
stan's time, 432 ; its castle-mound 
and Danish fortress, 432 ; its popu- 
lation, 433 and note ; its extent, 434 ; 
its suburbs, 434 ; its fishermen, 434 ; 
its Danish quarter, 434; its churches, 
434 ; Sivvard dies at, 539 ; occupied 
by William, 554 ; stormed, and its 
garrison slaughtered, 555 ; "shires" 
in, 221, 433, note, 442, 7wte 3 ; see of. 



its importance after the Danish con- 
quest of Northumbria, 89; Worces- 
ter annexed to it, 333 ; see Arch- 
bishops. 

Yorkshire, traces of Danish settlement 
in its local names, 1 1 1, 112 and notes ; 
trade of the Danish settlers in, 113, 
114; its ridings and wapentakes, 
115 ; traces of the ancient divisions 
of Deira in, 221 ; late introduction 
of the name, 228, note ; sfe Deira. 

Yser, river, Godwine's fleet in, 513, 

Z 

Zeeland, settlement of the Danes in, 83 ; 
jarls of, see Strut-Harald, Thurkill. 



THE END. 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 

By JOHN RICHAED GEEEN. 

Four Volumes. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50 per volume. 



The extraordinary success of Green's "Short History of the English 
People " was due to three things : its brevity, its treatment of the na- 
tional life beyond the strict domain of politics, and the admirable power 
of lucid and picturesque narrative shown by the author. The story of 
England is always interesting, but in the pages of Macaulay and Green it 
is fascinating. Mr. Green, who is an examiner in history at Oxford, proved 
by this work his thorough mastery of English history and his singular 
literary skill, and the larger, but not bulky, history which the first book 
implied has now appeared. It has all the charm of the earlier volume, 
with an opportunity for greater picturesqueness of detail, and it is truly 
a masterpiece of narration. The style is simple, racy, and vivid ; the 
movement continuous and alluring. The life of the original Englishmen 
before they came to Britain, with its social and political conditions, is 
sketched with great felicity, and invested with a human interest. With 
all its grace and charm, the book is vigorous and wholesome in tone, free 
from controversy, but full of the indications of a sound judgment and a 
sweet nature, and of the best historical spirit. The author's power of 
condensation, without losing the interest and color, the light and shade 
of his story, is remarkable. Without the slightest sacrifice of what is 
essential, he is never dry. He knows instinctively that the stately prolixi- 
ty of the old historians is now necessarily antiquated, and the very faculty 
that he displays of picturesque condensation without barrenness has be- 
come a cardinal qualification of the historian. 

Four moderate volumes give room for a sufficiently ample treatment, 
and it is so comprehensive, complete, and satisfactory that Green's must 
become the standard history of England, not only as a popular history, 
but as the history of the people. 

His book is the performance of cue of the ablest and cleverest literary men of 
the day. * * * His success, like all true success, is the legitimate fruit of energetic 
labor directed by talent and insight. * * * Mr. Green's workmanship is guided 
throughout by an original and, in our judgment, a true conception of the princi- 
ple on which an historical manual meant for general reading should be written. 
* * * Mr. Green, with the insight of genuine literary genius, rejected the attempt 
to tell something about everything. * * * of the skill with which he has described 
the matters on which he fixed the attention of students one cannot speak too 
highly. * * * He has discovered, or rediscovered, the art of compressed historical 
narrative. — The Nation, N. Y. 

It is thoroughly good and readable; it is both graceful and strong. • * * The 
author has not given us the bones of history, or merely its pageants, but the very 
life and body of ii,— Hartford Courant, 



Green's History of the English People. 



The appearance of Mr. Green's fourth vohime enables us to congratulate him 
on having brought his magnum optia to a close. * * * It is a sort of mosaic — a suc- 
cession of vivid pictures, always interesting and generally brilliant. * * * Take the 
book up where one may, it would be hard to light upon a dull or uulmportant 
passage. — Athenceum, London. 

A work clothed with a genuine and abiding charm. * * * Aside from the felicity 
of arrangement and diction of which, with each new volume, Mr. Green has given 
us fresh evidence, the attitude of his mind and the tone of hjs utterance are well 
fitted to impress a conviction of the author's equity and moderation. He seems 
to have no party to vindicate, no theory to illustrate, no private ends to serve. 
He is not a theologian, a politiciau, or a social reformer ; he is simply a story- 
teller, who means to tell the truth, and tell it well. * * * There was room for just 
such a book, which should relegate kings and nobles to the background of the 
picture, and in whose record foreign wars and dynastic quarrels should make way 
for the social growth and political enfranchisement of the bulk of the nation. * * * 
His style is clear, brisk, and strikingly unconventional. —A''. Y. Sun. 

Mr. Green's treatment of his majestic theme is simple, straightforward, honest, 
direct. And historically it fills up a gap hitherto uubridged. * * * It is the most 
concise, the most impartial history of England that has ever been written. Amer- 
ican readers now for the first time have within reach a trustworthy and readable 
outline of a people whose main branch we are. — Boston Traveller. 

Too niuch can hardly be said of the excellence of this history, its lucid ar- 
rangement of facts, its faithful characterization of kings, soldiers, statesmen, and 
ecclesiastics, and its picturesque narrative. * * * This work will be the only com- 
plete and comprehensive history of England from the earliest times to our own.— 
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 

Mr. Green's work will supply a want in our literature. There is an immense 
class of readers who are beyond their school-days, and want to read history, and 
not study it from a text-book. To them Mr. Green will come as a friendly author 
who gives neither too much nor too little. — Boston Transcript. 

The great charm of Mr. Green's earlier work lay in the matchless vigor of its 
style, its rich fancy, its vividness in narration, its undoubted originality. These 
are the qualities which made it the most readable sketch of English history that 
we have ; and the best testimony to its peculiar worth is to be sought in the 
welcome it has received at the hands of the general reader. Numbers of busy 
men, who have not the time to study English history, and who had been dis- 
gusted by the tediousness and dulness of other short histories, eagerly read Mr. 
Green's book. Thus it may be said to have created a new class of historical 
readers. The new book bears the same characteristics, and it is in the same de- 
partment that it is likely to be of permanent value. * * * It is full of thought and 
suggestion. It is fully up to the level of present historical criticism. The ma- 
terials are most cleverly put together ; the facts are exceedingly well marshalled. 
It never allows the interest to flag for an instant, and it remains by far the most 
graphic sketch of English history that exists.— ^cadem;/, London. 



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A SHOET HISTORY 



OF 



THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 

By JOJm EICHAED GEEEIT, M.A. 

8vo, Cloth, $1 30. 



The object of the book, that of combining the history of the people with the 
history of the kingdom, is most successfully carried out. It gives, I think, in the 
main, a true and accurate picture of the general course of English history. It 
displays throughout a firm hold on the subject, and a singularly wide range of 
thought and sympathy. As a composition, too, the book is clear, forcible, and 
brilliant. It is the most truly original book of the kind that I ever saw.— Extract 
from Letter 0/ Edward A. Feeeman, D.C.L., LL.D., &c., &c. 

Rightly taken, the history of England is one of the grandest human stories, 
and Mr. Green has so taken it that his book should delight the general reader 
quite as much as it delights the student. — Extract from Letter 0/ Professor Heney 

MOEr.EY. 

We know of no record of the whole drama of English history to be compared 
with it. We know of none that is so distinctly a work of genius. * * * It is a really 
wonderful production. There is a freshness and originality breathing from one 
end to the other— a charm of style, and a power, both narrative and descriptive, 
which lift it altogether out of the class of books to which at first sight it might 
seem to belong. The range, too, of subjects, and the capacity which the writer 
shows of dealing with so many diflereut sides of English history, witness to pow- 
ers of no common order. And, with all this, Mr. Green shows throughout that he 
is on all points up to the last lights; that he has made himself thoroughly master 
both of original authorities and of their modern interpreters. — Pall Mall Gazette, 
Loudon. 

Numberless are the histories of England, and yet until now it has been diffl- 
cnlt to select any one from the number as really and thoroughly satisfactory. 
This diiflculty exists no longer. We will not go so far as to pronounce Mr. Green's 
book faultless, but we will say without hesitation that it is almost a model of 
what such a book should be— so far above any other brief and complete history 
of England that there is no room for comparison. The characters of leaders are 
remarkably well described, and their respective influence upon history fairly and 
appreciatively judged. And the author has shown rare tact and discrimination 
in the selection of his facts, so that the reader feels himself to be always stand- 
ing on the firm ground of ascertained and systematized knowledge, while, at the 
same time, every line is interesting reading The Nation, N. Y. 



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STRM STUDIES FROM [MGLAIO AlO ITM 

BY 

JOHK EICHARD GEEEN^, M.A. 

Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 



For coDclensation of valuable material, happy reanimation of old themes and 
BUggestious of new, expressed in chaste and animated style, and thoroughly good 
English, these papers have not been excelled for many years. — Presbyterian, 
Philadelphia. 

The qualities which Mi\ Green's history evinces — learning, poetic sympathy, 
common-sense, large ideas, a genial liking for mankind in general— appear in 
the new volume of "Stray Studies." Every chapter in this book shows the thor- 
oughness of work and culture we should have expected. The range of thought, 
sympathy, and knowledge must be considerable of a man who discusses with 
equal zest and interest the manners of the poor of London, the resemblance be- 
tween Virgil and Tennyson, the Florence of Dante, the foibles of British tourists, 
and the charms and glories of the British maiden. * * * These "Stray Studies" 
will be a source of real pleasure and proflt to all who read them. The range 
of gifts and sympathies they show is indeed remarkable. — N. Y. Times, 

Lively, and eminently readable.— Af/iemcewm, London. 

A delightful series of reveries by a scholar, an historian, and a master of pure 
and captivating prose. The author's " History of the English People " has proved 
one of the most popular works of the day; these essays will farther stamp his 
reputation with the seal of cultivated approval. He brings his poetical taste and 
ripened learning into full play while sunning himself in Cannes, St. Honorat, and 
San Remo. He paints the Florence of Dante and the Venice of Tintoretto with 
the backward glance of poetical enthusiasm, and he is at home in Capri as in 
Oxford. Familiar with all their histories, and clothing himself for the time being 
with their romance, he is sufficient of an artist and a lover of the beautiful to 
revel in the changing tints of the sunny skies and the picturesque grace of silent 
ruins. Such essays as these form the most delightful reading possible.— C/wcafifo 
Inter-Ocean. 

These studies all alike bear internal evidence of having been written with a 
leisurely delight, which expresses itself in calm thoughts wedded to a style of 
chastened simplicity and elegance which all lovers of faultless composition must 
aimire.— Christian at Work, N. T. 

An altogether pleasant book to read. * * * It is written in the pure, plain, vig- 
orous English of a writer who has the habit of writing earnestly, and earnestly 
endeavoring to choose his words solely for their aptness to express his thought. 
—N. Y. Evening Post, 

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v^x^ 



^■^:i:x.^Y- 



THE MAKING GF ENGLAND. 

BY 

JOHN EICHARD GREEN, M.A., LL.D. 
With Maps. 8vo, Oloth, $2 50. 



Mr. Green's place as an historical scholar, ranking among the foremost of 
English historical scholars, can no Jonger be disputed. The book shows in every 
page it is emphatically a book of hard work. Mr. Green goes to the sources of 
English history, not as a novice, but as one to whom every step of ground is 
familiar. Those who had done any real work themselves knew thoroughly well 
that the "Short History" could not have been written without real work and 
plenty of it ; but now the evidence stands plain in the eyes even of the unlearned 
and unbelieving. Mr. Green not only knows his books, but he knows how to use 
them and how to judge of them, and he knows as well as ever how to tell the talo 
which he draws from them. Nowhere does his well-known power of painting and 
narrative come out in greater fulness than in the early part of the "Making of 
England;" and if there is not the same brilliancy in the latter part it is clearly 
not from lack of power. Mr. Green, as a literary artist, keeps his strength una- 
bated to the end.— E. A. Freeman in The Independent, N. Y. 

Mr. Green's book is a masterpiece. * * * Under his careful and ingenious guid- 
ance the reader is enabled to see that the advance of the invaders and the strug- 
gles of the so-called Heptarchy were no mere "battles of kites and crows," but, 
us Mr. Green puts it, " the birth-throes of our national life."— ioncfon Times. 

Mr. Green's new book possesses all the well-known charms of his fascinating 
style, and combines with them a great many other excellences in a far higher 
degree than usual. — Academy, London. 

Mr. Green is an author the brilliancy of whose talents is apt to throw into the 
shade the solid merits of his work. He cannot,, if he would, be dull. He is en- 
dowed with rare grace of style. He knows how to bring into relief the interest- 
ing features of unattractive subjects. He can combine a mass of detached facts, 
which, in other hands, would simply oppress the memory of students, into a nar- 
rative which it is easy^to read, and hard to forget. He is, in short, a literary 
artist. * * * Yet, though all this is true, nothing is a greater mistake than to sup- 
pose that Mr. Green is a brilliant writer who has not made serious contributions 
to the knowledge of history. The truth is, that while every page he writes 
sparkles with life and spirit, Mr. Green is at bottom an author of sound and ster- 
ling good sense, whose special excellence lies in his grasp of the main facts of the 
eras with which he is called to deal. " The Making of England " exhibits in the 
very strongest manner this " bottom of good sense," of sound judgment, which 
underlies all his speculations, and students will miss half the instruction 
which they ought to gather from the pages of Mr. Green's last work if they are 
led by the beauty of his style and the ingenuity of his thoughts to overlook the 
sense and wisdom to be found in every paj^e of the hook.— The Kation, N. Y. 

A really popular work was needed, and such in an eminent degree is that before 
us. It is more readable than most novels, and the dullest student cannot fail to 
have his enthusiasm aroused by its well-drawn portraitures and careful selection 
of important and decisive events Cincinnati Gazette. 



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/ 



./.. 



J 

Selected from Foreign and American Writers, and Edited by 
John Richard Green, M.A., LL.D,, Honorary Fellow of 
Jesus College, Oxford. Three parts in one Volume. 
Part I. From Hengest to Cressy. — Part II. From Cressy to 
Cromwell. — Part III, From Cromwell to Balaclava. 12mo, 
Clotb, $1 50. 

This book is a very happy thought iudeed. From a large inimber of staiulard 
authors — Macaulay, Gibbon, Fronde, Guizot, Freemau, Scott, Bancroft, Motley, 
Miss Yonge, and others — Mr. Green has made some seventy-five selections, con- 
necting them with links of his own ; the effect of the whole book, in its three 
parts, being to tell the story of English history from tlie beginning until the 
present, by means of successive pictures of notable periods, events, and person- 
ages. "Varieties of stjie lend a peculiar attractiveness to the method, and in plan 
and execution the book is an admirable, as it is truly unique, short history of 
England.— Liferaj-!/ Worlds Boston. 

Will doubtless be as acceptable to pupils as they are likely to be to teachers. 
Mr. Freeman's account of the Battle of Hastings, Kingsley's well-known defence 
of the poetry of Puritanism, Macaulay's sketch of the landing of William III., and 
other extracts of a similar character, are likely to enliven many an hour's teaching. 
— Academy, London. 

The purpose of these Readings, as illustrating different periods of English his- 
tory, is excellent. * * ' IMr. Green's selection of quotations is admirable. * * * We 
strongly recommend the introduction of Mr. Green's " Readings from English Hi.s- 
tory " into every school library. — Examiner, London. 

It is needless to say that the extracts are admirably selected and woven to- 
gether. The book is sure to be both useful and pupular — Saturday lieview, London. 

It is a gleaning of the picturesque and tragic scenes and brief biographies and 
events, taken in such connection as to make it a consecutive history. * * * Many 
of the articles are masterpieces. Such a book in the class-room of a teacher 
versed in English history will call a new interest to this ordinarily dry study. — 
Inter-Ocean, Chicago. 

Such selections as are given in this book— selections chosen as the brightest, 
most eloquent descriptive passages in monumental works— are calculated to throw 
a charm around the study of history which properly belongs there. Teachers 
who are reading up, in order to crystallize their knowledge of English and 
American history, will find a rare treasure here. Every great event in the growth 
of civil and religious liberty is illustrated by some grajihic pen-painting which 
will indelibly imprint it on the memory. — Pacific School Journal, San Francisco. 

In these selections the author has used the wisest discretion and the rarest 
judgment. The selections have been v,'Oven into a continuous story by original 
comments and connecting links of narrative. * * * The book is admirably adapted 
for a school history, but is so complete that it may be perused with pleasure and 
profit by those children of a larger growth who have passed the meridian of life. 
— Northern Budget, Troy. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

(|^° Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, 
to any part of the United States, on receipt of the 2yrice. 



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